Ammonia

[blackers92]

I just added 4 zebra danios to my 140 litre tank and the ammonia has tested as 1.0,

does that mean i need to do a 50% water change?

do i need to do this everytime? there are plants in my tank so im a little surprised that it has gotten so high so fast

 

[Assaye]

You need a LOT of plants to get rid of ammonia. The tank needs to be stuffed with them.

If you ammonia is above 0.25, you need to do a water change if you want to keep your fish healthy. You need to do that every time. Test daily and do water changes as necessary.

Remember, a 50% water change will only halve the ammonia. With 1.0ppm you'll need to do about a 80% water change to get the levels down low enough.

 

[erk628]

Is your tank cycled?

 

[blackers92]

no im cycling my tank as we speak, its been cycling for about a week now I just did my first water change it wasnt as bad as i thought

ill let it run for a bit and then test again

well my tank has quite alot of plants theres at least 7 in there but none of them are established yet

so whenever my tanks ammonia is above .25 i have to do a water change?

 

[erk628]

If you have any ammonia or nirites that show up you do 50% plus water change.

 

[blackers92]

I just did a 80% change about 4 hours ago and the ammonia is back at 1.0!

surely this cannot be possible

 

[K-Holed]

Have you tried testing your tap water?

 

[blackers92]

wow i never thought of that, i will do it first thing tommorow, i doubt it though because when i filled the tank originally there was nothing in the water

would the seachem stability do it?

 

[waterdrop]

Hi blackers, glad to see you've embarked on the next step! I've been keeping an eye on your posts when I can.

Yup, now you're getting your own live hands-on demonstration right before your eyes of why you hear us going on and on about fishless cycles and all that! You are simply seeing the reality of how fast and furious the water change work can become in a "fish-in" situation!

Your job now is simple (if laborious!) The larger and more gravel-cleaning oriented your water changes are, the more effective they will be at getting you and keeping you on the numbers that you want. Often the first few really big water changes will "get your numbers down" and at some point it will become easier to maintain them. (We don't quite know why this is but there's been some speculation that these nitrogen containing compounts (ammonia and nitrite and nitrate of course all have nitrogen and to a large extent we're talking about charged ions) will have some charge attraction to organic compounds or even inorganic compounds and directly or indirectly through this mechanism be distributed in the tank less evenly.. hanging out a bit more with the gravel and filter and thus responding more to gravel-cleaning action than one might expect!)

You have to be a bit of a "detective." Your task is to figure out what percentage and frequency of water changes will help you get both the ammonia (and the nitrite(NO2) if that happens) down so close to zero ppm that you can then go away and live your life for 12 hours at work or school or about town or whatever and when you come back still find that the toxin has only risen to no higher than 0.25ppm. Of course, the idea is that you test again and water change again if you've gone above 0.25ppm or feel you will in the -next- 12 hours. This is the tyranny of a fish-in cycle!

Most people of course choose some hour such that they are home at both ends of the day (eg. 7am, 7pm, something like that.) Does that make sense? And of course you want to always be using good technique for the return water with a good conditioner like Prime being overdosed at 1.5x or 2x (but not more than 2x) and good rough temperature matching with your hand and not forgetting to repower your heater and filter of course!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[blackers92]

Thanks for all the help waterdrop, I will have to figure out what percentage I have to change and hopefully get a feel for how long it will last before I will have to change it again. 12 hours would be great, as today i only got about 5, but i only did a 50% change i probably should of done more. I also didnt clean the gravel but i will tommorow. As tedious as it may be it only took me about 45 minutes max to change the water which i dont really think is too much, but i could easily picture some people being to lazy to bother. It would be great if i had some sort of warning or alert that could tell me when I am either at .25ppm or beyond, but i guess thats what my testing kit is for. Luckily i am currently on school holidays so I have about 3 more weeks when I can change water in the morning, but i will try to get into a routine of doing it in the afternoon as that is when i will have some spare time. But I was quite shocked when i came home this afternoon to see my tank had such high levels again, 4 zebra danios look so small yet produce so much, i could only imagine how much a fully stocked tank that hasnt been cycled would produce. I have read that zebra danios are tough, but how long could they last with ammonia levels beyond .25ppm? i would hate for them to die overnight or something

well i will continue to post what is happening and hopefully some of the ammonia will begin to break down into nitrite and then eventually nitrates. I could only imagine how excited people must get when they get 0 ammonia 0 nitrites and x number of nitrates i cant wait.

 

[blackers92]

Ok i changed 80% of my water and my ammonia is down to 0, i will wait until about 7pm tonight and cycle whatever ammonia is there as that is the time i would like to cycle rather then the morning. I tested my pH and got 7.6 and then i thought ill try the high range pH and i got in the high 8's

i presume this is bad? how do i lower it, i have read that people dont reccomend using chemicals to do it. this cannot be good for my danios

its like I take one step forward and two back haha

i changed the water about 45 minutes ago and just tested then should it filter abit more before i test?

i also have gH and kH salts that came with the tank, i am yet to use them as i dont fully understand them i also cannot test for kh or gh so i am a bit skeptical.

 

[roadmaster]

Ok i changed 80% of my water and my ammonia is down to 0, i will wait until about 7pm tonight and cycle whatever ammonia is there as that is the time i would like to cycle rather then the morning. I tested my pH and got 7.6 and then i thought ill try the high range pH and i got in the high 8's

i presume this is bad? how do i lower it, i have read that people dont reccomend using chemicals to do it. this cannot be good for my danios

its like I take one step forward and two back haha

i changed the water about 45 minutes ago and just tested then should it filter abit more before i test?

i also have gH and kH salts that came with the tank, i am yet to use them as i dont fully understand them i also cannot test for kh or gh so i am a bit skeptical.

I would leave the GH and KH salts alone and would not use them. The ph you posted will suit most tropical fish and during the (cycling)or maturing process the pH can fluctuate until the tank has settled. In my view, what you DO want to add to the water is a conditioner that clearly says on the bottle that it removes or detoxifys CHLORINE,CHLORAMINES,and AMMONIA. Not all water conditioners detoxify the ammonia but rather leave it for the biological filter to process. In new tanks, there isn't yet developed enough of the beneficial bacteria to break down the ammonia from fish waste and fish food. PRIME is a very good water conditioner for the aquarium and is used by many.
Feeding the four danios sparingly will also help reduce ammonia levels.For the (cycling) or maturing process, I would feed the fish about half a dime size amount every other day and only once every other day.
fish foods contain animal proteins that when dissolved,create ammonia. Add to this the fact that fish produce ammonia through respiration and waste (urine,poop) you can see that there is always ammonia being produced in the aquarium and is why frequent water changes while fish in cycling are needed perhaps once or twice daily until the beneficial bacteria that consumes the ammonia and waste has developed in sufficient numbers to handle the load from afore mentioned.
After the tank has (cycled)or matured, Weekly water change of 25 to 30 percent once a week will help to keep the fishes healthy and organic levels low. Hope some of this helps.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, nice discussion of several fish-in cycling topics there by roadmaster and they're pretty good comments for a newbie, don't disagree with any of them. We too have found Prime to be our most often recommended conditioner here in the beginner's section.

Blackers, not only do you not have to worry about that pH, you've actually got it backwards and a pH of 8.0 to 8.4 is wonderful news as that's the ideal "sweet spot" that the autotrophic bacteria like for growing fastest! And danios are quite adjustable to different pH conditions as long as they don't change too fast. I -will- comment however that I've found that danios rather like it if the water is more like 75F rather than warmer. They tend to like it slightly cooler than some other tropicals. That's quite a ways off from the 84F/29C that the bacteria like, but hey, that's fish-in cycling for you, it has to be optimized much more for the fish than the bacteria, which is one of the things that can slow it down a bit compared to fishless cycling.

Hardness (mineral content of the water) and pH are not things we want to alter if we can help it, especially as beginners. The important lesson is that you want to start out by sticking to whatever the heck hardness and pH the source water (usually tap water for most people but sometimes well water etc.) of your house is giving you and consider it to be an important "home base" for you. By sticking to your own source water you create an important safety net that water changes will be always bringing your fish back to what they're used to, rather than potentially shocking them with a change. Tropical fish are much more sensitive to people -changing- hardness/pH on them than to the actual numerical level these things are at (except with extremes, but that's unlikely to be a factor.) What your fish want is stability and stability hopefully -around- your base household tap parameters. Once your cycling is finished, we'll want you to settle into comfortable weekly gravel-clean-water-changes and the reason that will be such a good habit to learn is partly because the high frequency (weekly) will help to always keep hardness and pH close to what your tap water is, make sense?

~~waterdrop~~