Ammonia Levels

[AKGrown]

Hey!

I am having trouble keeping my ammonia levels down in my tank.

I have a 20 gallon

Filtered of course (penguin 200)

Heated (between 78-80 degrees)

Planted 5 small 2 grassliike 1 large leaf 1 bamboo

3 platys
3 Glofish
3 Corys (2 small 1 medium)
3 snails
2 frogs
1 oto (small)


I have been doing frequent water changes and have gotten it down quite a bit but i'm not sure what I am doing wrong?

I have tried 2 brands, Ammonia Clear (fizzy tabs) and Prime. With little to no success.

Any advice??
Thanks!

 

[waterdrop]

Hi AKGrown,

I looked back at your other posts and saw that you got good advice from OM47 and Tolak in the welcome section. Have you continued to follow what they said? (the advice was that most of your changes should be in the neighborhood of 75-80% (at least until your ammonia and nitrite levels seem to be staying between zero ppm and 0.25ppm, which is the goal in Fish-In cycling.))

What size water changes have you been doing and how often have you been doing them? The Prime is the only ammonia related chemical you should be using and it should be dosed, ideally, at 1.5x to 2x the amount the bottle tells you (the amount you dose will probably be less than one thread in the bottle cap.) I would not be using the other chemical. We only use conditioner to help us through the first 24 hours after a water change, not as any kind of ongoing ammonia control. Water changes are the only ongoing effective approach to elevated ammonia and/or nitrite.

The Fish-In cycling process takes between 1 and 2 months and when you are in the middle of it it feels like nothing is ever going to change. But eventually it does and you get two days in a row with zeros for levels and you haven't changed water. That is the signal of the beginning of the end. Then you just watch it hopefully repeat that for a week and once you've passed that qualification you can consider yourself cycled.

If you are simply unable to sustain water changes that keep you down below 0.25ppm during the cycle (this happens sometimes when the stocking is a lot higher than optimal for a fish-in cycle) the only other effective thing is the re-homeing of some of the stock, to lighten the bioload on your filter.

Does all of that makes sense?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[AKGrown]

Hi AKGrown,

I looked back at your other posts and saw that you got good advice from OM47 and Tolak in the welcome section. Have you continued to follow what they said? (the advice was that most of your changes should be in the neighborhood of 75-80% (at least until your ammonia and nitrite levels seem to be staying between zero ppm and 0.25ppm, which is the goal in Fish-In cycling.))

What size water changes have you been doing and how often have you been doing them? The Prime is the only ammonia related chemical you should be using and it should be dosed, ideally, at 1.5x to 2x the amount the bottle tells you (the amount you dose will probably be less than one thread in the bottle cap.) I would not be using the other chemical. We only use conditioner to help us through the first 24 hours after a water change, not as any kind of ongoing ammonia control. Water changes are the only ongoing effective approach to elevated ammonia and/or nitrite.

The Fish-In cycling process takes between 1 and 2 months and when you are in the middle of it it feels like nothing is ever going to change. But eventually it does and you get two days in a row with zeros for levels and you haven't changed water. That is the signal of the beginning of the end. Then you just watch it hopefully repeat that for a week and once you've passed that qualification you can consider yourself cycled.

If you are simply unable to sustain water changes that keep you down below 0.25ppm during the cycle (this happens sometimes when the stocking is a lot higher than optimal for a fish-in cycle) the only other effective thing is the re-homeing of some of the stock, to lighten the bioload on your filter.

Does all of that makes sense?

~~waterdrop~~

yes it certianly makes sense I was doing water changes every day at 75% I then moved everything (water filter gravel plants etc) into a 20 gallon tank after about a week or so of that without the levels going far enough down. Someone somewhere along the way told me not to change my filter..but I have a biowheel too..isn't that where the bacteria will lie and wont my ammonia levels be high if I don't change it? I used the fizzy tabs first and had no luck then after several water changes switched to prime. and that is what i have been adding to my new water when I go to change it. I thought that I should be about right with my stocking? The only thing that I did was get a larger tank in hopes that with the extra space my ammonia would go down and my fish would be happier. I had had the other tank going for about 4 months...and when i switched the only thing new was the tank itself..

 

[Mikaila31]

yes the bacteria reside mostly in the filter and on the bio wheel. The convert ammonia to nitrite, then nitrite to nitrate. That is the cycle in its simplest form. If you remove or replace too much of the media you loose too much good bacteria which will result in ammonia and/or nitrite levels. The only time you need to replace media is if it is falling apart, you should clean it monthly in old tank water or chlorinated water.

 

[AKGrown]

yes the bacteria reside mostly in the filter and on the bio wheel. The convert ammonia to nitrite, then nitrite to nitrate. That is the cycle in its simplest form. If you remove or replace too much of the media you loose too much good bacteria which will result in ammonia and/or nitrite levels. The only time you need to replace media is if it is falling apart, you should clean it monthly in old tank water or chlorinated water.

Thats what I had been doing, I had kept the filter in for approx 1 month and the more time went on the higher they got, I changed the filter and it went down..perhaps I changed something else that I was doing in order for it to occur that way. Im just rather confuzed. So I will keep this filter in and not change it. If my levels start to climb again what should I do?

 

[roadmaster]

Were it me, I would perform water change any time ammonia levels were more than .25 Would reduce feeding of fish to a half of dime size amount, once every other day.
Would see that no one else is feeding the fish. Would check to see that snails are alive frequently. (dead snails will cause ammonia spike).
Would not touch biowheels and as others have mentioned,,,clean filter material in dechlorinated water or old aquarium water you draw out during water changes. If fish are not overfed, filter material will stay cleaner and not need frequent cleaning .

 

[AKGrown]

Were it me, I would perform water change any time ammonia levels were more than .25 Would reduce feeding of fish to a half of dime size amount, once every other day.
Would see that no one else is feeding the fish. Would check to see that snails are alive frequently. (dead snails will cause ammonia spike).
Would not touch biowheels and as others have mentioned,,,clean filter material in dechlorinated water or old aquarium water you draw out during water changes. If fish are not overfed, filter material will stay cleaner and not need frequent cleaning .

I had reduced my feedings but perhaps I will even more. I had been feeding just flakes one time per day and the next day I fed bloodworms (frozen) mainly for my frogs. and then I would repeat the two day cycle. Should I trim like the dead leaves and such off of my plants..I have a few spots that could use some attention? Snails are all alive! and attempting to procreate..haha..so I will take a shot at the advice and see where it lands me. Thanks!

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, it is always a good idea to keep your dead plant material trimmed out, your feedings minimal, and be critical of any odd kind of excess like dead snails or extra bloodworms frogs may have missed -- it could be that something like that is making things worse for you. I also agree that we need to be clear about the biowheel, that you certainly do not need to be changing out to new biowheels but instead can swish the wheel to free it of excess debris, in the old tank water that has just been removed during one of your (I'm sure fairly frequen) water changes. (Since you are still having trouble with excess ammonia though, you won't want to do any sort of filter cleaning unless something is seriously clogged, since you are trying to let your immature bacterial colonies build up their new biofilms on your biomedia (the biowheel.))

~~waterdrop~~

 

[shurton]

I feel your pain! My fish in cycle took a full two months, the first 6 weeks dealing with ammonia, and the last couple weeks just nitrite.
During the ammonia stage I was changing 30-40% water every two days, and once I got to high nitrite levels I was doing 30% every day. About a month in I started adding Nutrafin Cycle or Seachem Stability to help with the beneficial bacteria. That seemed to help as well.
I have a filter and bio wheel setup as well, and would recommend not changing the filter during the cycle, just rinse it in tank water every once in a while. I'm not sure I understood correctly, but you should never be changing the bio wheel, that's where you're good bacteria live. Make sure you have no untreated water touching your filter or biowheel, because that will kill your beneficial bacteria and you'll be starting again.
Keep it up.... you'll get there.