Ammonia Problem. Help!

[Tizer]

just do a 90% water change now, then 50 every day for a week, then test again, simples if you are poor.

 

[OldMan47]

Plants do nothing to help a cycle. Rather they remove the need for a cycle by directly removing nitrogen from the water. This "heavily planted" tank never needed to cycle. It was ready to add fish as soon as I got the plants planted.

This "lightly planted" tank could no way be counted on to handle ammonia on its own.

The misconception that plants help a cycle are rampant on the internet but they are really just nitrogen sponges.

 

[Aqua Tom]

just do a 90% water change now, then 50 every day for a week, then test again, simples if you are poor.

+1

Fish-in-cycling is hard work, there is no way of getting around that.


Tom

 

[bliss_OG]

Hi all, thanks for the answers. I just got another water test done;
pH 7.4
Nitrite 5
Ammonia 1. The shop advised me to do two 25% water changes and test next week. I will get another test done either Monday or Tuesday.

 

[Tizer]

nitrite 5 = dead fish in a few days

 

[bliss_OG]

That's not very helpful ...

 

[fluttermoth]

Any level of ammonia or nitrite above 0.25ppm can cause health problems or even death in fish.

If you do a 25% water change, that'll reduce your nitrite to 3.75ppm; another would reduce that only to around 2.8ppm, which is still far, far too high.

You want to do an immediate 90% change (leave just enough water for the fish to swim upright; don't forget to turn your heater/filter off!). That'll bring the nitrite down to around 0.5ppm; then you can do another 60 or 75% change to get that down under 0.25.

The same appies to the ammonia, but as that's at 1ppm, one 90% change would sort that out, so you need to concentrate on the nitrite for the moment.

I know that's a lot of hard work on a big tank, but it must be done for the safety of your fish.

 

[bliss_OG]

Ok, thank you