Ammonia

Gytas · Mar 10, 2011

ok so i have had my fish tank for a few months now.... i got it cycled.... everything was going well and my guppy even had fry.... but then i sow something on the filter so i decided to clean it, but i over did it when i was cleaning the filter so then i had high ammonia

..... it took me 2 weeks to get everything on the track... o week later there was very high nitrite and like 0.6 ammonia it took me again a long time to restore everything... but while i had some nitrite still left and a little of ammonia i decided to get a plant ( stupid of me?? )..... after that the ammonia was going crazy even the filter was not running well ( the flow was weak ) in the filter i found a very big amount of tetra mini baby food which i was feeding my fry with ( i mean there was loads of it, the sponges were full they were very heavy it was full of that food it was sick ) so i decided to clean the filter out again on sunday.... the ammonia is still very high but i think it will take another week or so to got back to zero so the bacteria can break down the ammonia

any ideas guys?

any help would be great

thanks

Joshwainwright · Mar 10, 2011

Have you been cleaning the filter media out in tap water or tank water?

Gytas · Mar 10, 2011

tank water

Warehouse · Mar 10, 2011

Big water changes daily will help the water quality and ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels. I'd say 50% plus per day until things improve.

Gytas · Mar 10, 2011

so far i have been doing 50% water change every 2 days .... i use ammo lock which protects fish from ammonia

stuuk1 · Mar 10, 2011

Dont use ammo lock, there is no need to use chemicals...

Just do your water changes and clean your filter every week, just a couple of squeezes in a bucket of tank water.

Danbarb · Mar 10, 2011

If you DO use chemicals the only one I'd suggest would be a water conditioner from Kordon called Amquel plus. 5ml to 1gal or 40 litres. It removes nitrates nitrite ammonia chlorine and chloramines. Reason I suggest this particular one is that I have ammonia in my tap water, so when I do my water changes (with RO mixed) I use this to remove the ammonia + the chlorine and metals at the same time.

Each to their own though. Water changes will definitely help.

Clean filter every week? You have to be kidding!! The filter media needs to accumulate bacteria in order to turn ammonia into nitrite into nitrate. What about the nitrogen cycle. No offence. Just look up aquarium nitrogen cycle on google.

Also if you had a lot of fish food in the filter, perhaps you are putting the food too near the inlet. You could try tying a bit of old tight/stocking material over the filter inlet which should stop it getting sucked up there (hopefully).

EDIT: Perhaps there is so much fry, and so much fish in there that the filter can't cope. Just another idea I am throwing out really.