Ammonia Problem

[riksworld]

Hi All,

It would seem that my ammonia levels have a mind of there own at the moment, hopfully someone can shed some light on this or give some general advice, I last did my water change last sunday, waster testing was perfect, since monday, the ammonia has shot up to 1pm, when i do a water change, it goes down to 0.25pm, then by the evening its back to 1pm

over the last 5 days, ive done a 25%, 50% and a 75% water changes with the water treatment for the tap water, the gravel as been hovered up every day and still the ammonia is still doing this, nothing else has been added, the filter has been cleaned and rinsed in the tank water, but no change, ive even stoped feeding the fish now, every other day at the moment. the tap water has been tested for ammonia and that comes back with 0pm, so i know thats ok

Can any one shed any light on what im doing wrong or what else i could possibly do to help sort this problem out

 

[Miss Wiggle]

well without the full history of the tank it's impossible to say why this has happened, there's a number of reasons which could be the answer.

but there's basically three things it could be

1 - the filter is underperforming, just not processing the ammonia produced by the fish fast enough to keep the water clear. Unlikley to have come on suddenly though, this would be a gradual build up so if your sure you've had no ammonia in the last few weeks this is unlikley. If you post the size of your tank, all the fish you have and the make/model of the filter we cna advise if this is likley.

2 - something in the tank is giving off large amounts of ammonia, if there's a dead fish somewhere or a lot of decaying plant matter that could do it. have you added anything new to the tank recently, changed the substrate or anything like that?

3 - mini cycle, something has wiped out some or all of your filter bacteria and as such it's cycling to catch up. If this is the case then it's just a case of testing every day, doing loads of water changes to try and keep the levels of ammonia and nitrite below 0.25, may take a few weeks but they'll get back to normal soon.

 

[riksworld]

Thanks for your advise, the tank is a 180 litre, with a Fluval 205 filter system, the tank currently has, danio x 2, guppies x 3, yoyo x 2, tetra x 5 and a baby Hypostomus plecostomus

The tank has been up and running for around 3 months now without problems till now