Ammonia

[D 3LKO]

Hello everyone, what you're about to read you have probably read a million times before but any help would be much appreciated as this is my first post.

I'm kind of a newbie to tropical fish keeping but i do no the basics about PH levels, Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate.

Ok so here's my problem, i've recently bought the aquamanta 300 external filter to replace the juwel internal filter as it was driving me crazy
(didn't seem to be keeping the water clean) I let the external filter run for a week with the juwel filter then 4 days ago i took the internal filter out.

Everything was fine so i decided to buy some new fish, 3 doctor fish and 2 blue rams. I added the fish etc etc and later that night i noticed one ram had white salt like spots on her fins. I took a picture and showed it to my local aquatic shop and they confirmed it's white spot only a minor case, they said it would have happened when transporting the fish home. Can this happen?

Yesterday i started the treatment for whitespot, i'm using (water life protozin) as two of my guppies out of the 12 have fin rot. Today i decided to test the PH etc PH came out at 7.0, Nitrate between 10-25, Nitrite 0.1 and Ammonia 1.2 - 2.0 which is very high as normally it's at 0.11.

So i need to no what to do, do i water change 50% right now? What about the medication for whitespot it's a 6 day course, should i wait until it finishes? I have no idea, i know the ammonia levels are dangerous but i don't want the whitespot to get any worse and spread. If i water change will i have to prolong the treatment?

Also could this high ammonia level be due to the new filter?

Any information would help cheers

 

[fluttermoth]

You need to do a much larger water change than 50%; you need to leave just enough water for the fish to swim upright. whitespot is often bought on by stress or poor water conditions.

I'm arfraid running the new filter for a week will have done nothing to transfer the bacterial colony; you should have run them both for six to eight weeks, or put the old media into the new filter. You've basically now got an uncycled tank and are doing a fish in cycle. There are some articles on fish in cycling in our beginner's resource centre (link is in my sig).

You'll have to water change as much as necessary to keep the ammonia to under 0.25ppm, and top up the whitespot medication to the correct dose.

 

[DrRob]

Yes, it was taking the filter out that did it. With a cycled tank the new filter will have had little to no ammonia to cause it to develop an bacterial colony. My other thought is, did you totally remove the juwel internal? It's a fairly chunky item and may have thrown up a lot of debris from the bottom of the tank if there was much down there. Sometimes disturbing that can cause this sort of effect.

You didn't, by any chance, keep the sponges in a pot of tank water? Although after 4 days it'd be debatable if they'd be of much use, but they're unlikely to hurt, either back in the internal or chunks in the new external.

If you change 50% of the water your ammonia would still be 0.6-1ppm. Still way too high really, and likely to carry on rising, as the fish waste will keep driving it up. If you do a 90% water change you'll drop to 0.12-0.2, assuming your replacement water is ammonia free.

On the plus side, your nitrite is positive. Sounds stupid, but it does mean that your filter is doing something, but it's another reason to do a large water change.

As for the whitespot, it's said to affect fish more when they're stressed by bad water conditions, so they stand a lot more chance if you get the water sorted out.

By the way, make sure there's no carbon in the filter while you're treating.

 

[D 3LKO]

Thanks for the quick reply, i'll do the water change now.

The person in the shop told me it would be fine to run the new filter for about a week before swapping over, i'm new to this so i just listened.

 

[HayzH]

We.ve all been there ..... welcome to the true place to find out about fish!!!