ammonia

sarah-j

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help, my ammonia levels have drastically increased over past two days. I have lost three fish, My tank is new however i have set up properly and everything was at zero i.e ammonia etc. I have added new fish this week. We have done a partial water change and used ammonia chips, is there any other adivse. We did have pregnant female guppies but have lost two of them.
 
sorry, but what is ammonia chips ?
 
ahh sorry I'm not familiar with them. However I would say that the only possible thing you can really do is water changes :/
Out of interest, how big is your tank and how have you been cycling it ? Fishless with ammonia or with fish ?
 
I havent used them to filter the tank only to help prevent the ammonia build up. they are an addition to your filter. are you from the uk? I was just wondering if there was any way to rapidly reduce the ammonia so I dont lose any more fish. Apart from doing partial water changes.
 
I had the tank for about a week, setting it up, using safe water, bacteria and testing it. We added Tetra neons which we still have and seem to be thriving. The ammonia levels were good, the nitrite levels were good and still are but the ammonia has increased over past two days. We did a partial water change yesterday but have lost two fish.
 
This is taken from one of the links.

Minimizing Fish Stress During Initial Cycling
Should ammonia levels become high during the cycling process, corrective measures will need to be taken to prevent fish deaths. Most likely, you will simply perform a sequence of partial water changes, thereby diluting ammonia to safer concentrations.
As a final caution, several commercial products (e.g., ``Amquel'' or ``Ammo-Lock'') safely neutralize ammonia's toxicity. Amquel does not remove the ammonia, it simply neutralizes its toxicity. Biological filtration is still needed to convert the (neutralized) ammonia to nitrite and nitrate. Thus, adding Amquel causes the ammonia produced by the fish to be neutralized instantly, yet still allows the nitrogen cycle to proceed. Using Amquel during the cycling phase has one significant drawback, however. Amquel (and similar products) may cause ammonia test kits to give false readings, making it difficult to determine exactly when cycling has completed. See the TEST KIT SECTION for details.

It is also possible to cycle a tank without ever adding fish. The role fish provide in the cycling process is simply their steady production of ammonia; the same effect can be achieved by adding chemical forms of ammonia manually (e.g., ammonium chloride). However, it is a bit more complicated than using fish because the water chemistry needs to be monitored more closely in order to add the proper amount of ammonia on a day-to-day basis.
 
It actually sounds like your tank is still cycling. There is really nothing else you can do I'm afraid. You are lucky though that your neons are thriving, as they are usually very delicate to new tanks.
Just don't buy any more fish until you stabilize things.
 
Thanks for your advise. We also noticed that our temperature went up by 3 degrees. We are doing a water change and will hopefully sort itself out. Thanks again.
 
Good luck, hope they all make it, watch the neons sensitive fish.
 
As much as you may hate to hear this, you will probably have to take the ammonia chips out of the filter before the tank will cycle. If they are removing the ammonia chemically, then you aren't building a bacteria colony and will be totally dependent on them from now on. Just do daily water changes of about 25% to reduce the ammonia. You may even have to do them twice daily, morning and night. What size tank is it? What fish do you have. What and how many fish did you add this week?
 
bah
i'be bought those ammonia remvoers that go in filters and they do crap. they supposedly absorb ammonia but they do so very little, and mainly act as media to culture bacetira on. so they don't do anything bad, but they aren't very useful either...
 
I added two swordtails, a female platy and a siamese fighter fish(male). The tank is 68 litres. The female swordtail died yesterday.
 

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