Amonia Spike From Dead Fish?

[waterdrop]

Yes, take the hint from OM47, you always want to be using dechlor and ideally in your situation especially you want to be dosing it at 1.5x or 2x the amount the instructions say, but not more than 2x. I would also recommend that you be using a very high quality conditioner like Prime as its recommended by many experienced aquarists here (also works out to be cheaper because its concentrated. Pond conditioners are even cheaper but may not be as high quality for the fish-in cycling situation like you are in -- they could be switched to for cheapness later on after everything has been running ok for several months.)

The Barbs are stressed because you still have 0.50ppm ammonia in there. For us humans that would be like still being locked in the garage with the running automobile and its exhaust, after somebody blew some fresh air in the window (you making your first water change to get it down from 1.0 to 0.50) but still left us locked in!

The important thing is that you are taking action and moving in the right direction and now have the info to know what to do. Barbs are very excitable fish too, so they probably scooted around a lot when you did the water change and their gill movement may be more exaggerated due to that.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[wildechild_01]

Ok, so Ammonia levels are much better after todays water change, less than .25 but more than zero, so will check again later tonight and see how things are going... also, my filter media is all looking a little brownish, is this normal? a good sign? a bad Sign I am still not seeing any Nitrite levels though, is it possible that the Nitrite bacteria are keeping up or is it just that none of the ammonia is being broken down??? Again thanks for all the help and advice

 

[waterdrop]

Ah, you are passing the initiation... you are finally getting past some of the doubts and have acheived getting your ammonia between 0 and 0.25ppm Congrats! That is where you need to keep it to be an official "Fish-In Cycler"... hard work, isn't it?

Probably no one can answer your question very definatively. It might be that your A-Bacs are not producing much nitrite(NO2) yet or it might indeed be that you've got enough N-Bacs that they are keeping up.

Lacking the satisfaction of truly knowing though, you've just got to "carry on" ... The goal of fish-in is to keep those fish healthy and to do that you've got to maintain both toxins between zero and 0.25 as you've seen. It often takes about a month total but is very unpredictable and you might be lucky. You'll know you're pretty much at the end when you can go two solid days with no water changes and get solid zero ppm ammonia and solid zero ppm nitrite(NO2) reported by your liquid based tests. When that happens you (yes, you drink a beer, but) continue to test and watch it each day without doing any water changes and hopefully it will keep pure zeros for the whole week after which you can relax.

(everyone who's done an unplanned Fish-In Cycle becomes a lover of the concept of the Fishless Cycle!)

~~waterdrop~~

 

[wildechild_01]

i must say, it is a lot of work, but i am getting a pretty good system for doing water changes.. ha ha ha... water levels are good tonight just did anoher large water change and ammonia read as 0 so will see what i gets up to overnight, there is food in my tank overnight for my loaches so that will probably result in higher levels but have to feed my fishies... my next tank will definitely be a fishless cycle, and run longer than this one.. yay learning is fun... im going through dechlor like a mad man though

 

[OldMan47]

You should get the concentrated dechlorinator next time. Seachem Prime is concentrated to where you use only 1 ml for 10 US gallons but I keep reading that pond dechlorinator is about equally concentrated.
The brown color on your filter media means you can actually see the stain caused by the bacteria film. Some of the brown is just fish waste of course. When you start having the flow restricted by a dirty filter you will need to clean tour media in used tank water. Although you want to remove whatever is blocking flow, you need to remember not to scrub enough to remove the brown color from the media. Since you have seen nitrites process in the past, you might possibly be processing nitrites just fine. Really the only way to tell is to see ammonia being controlled with no nitrite build.

 

[wildechild_01]

oh man am i glad i found this forum.. ha ha, so i missed my water change this morning due to an emergency at work, but att 9pm last night ammonia was non measurable, and at 6pm tonight it was somewhere between .5 and 1.0ppm i am currently doing a water change that should drop it to around .25 and then will do another smaller one before bed.. my question this time is if Live plants will help control the ammonia levels, and if so whould i maybe one or two in this weekend or should i wait till after the cycling? again thanks for your advice

 

[OldMan47]

Live plants are a mixed blessing. When they are growing well, they will definitely suck up lots of ammonia. Unfortunately, if they shed a few leaves that rot in your tank, they make the ammonia problem worse instead of better. Unless you have some good lighting and can find fast growing plants like elodea to use, I would skip the live plants and stick with just fish until you can get them settled in. After that, if you want to play around with plants it will be less dangerous to the fish. I do use live plants to help my fish sometimes but I have had good luck with my plants and use plants that I already understand not ones that are new to me. I even take the plants from my other tanks if I am going to try to use them to combat ammonia.

 

[wildechild_01]

ha ha sorry, just realised i double posted..

 

[wildechild_01]

YAY good news... well, semi good news, I am finally getting Nitrite Levels in my water tests but not high ones last night ammonia and Nitrite were both at .25ppm ish, so i decided to leave it till morning and see what happens (not sure if that was a good idea) and this morning Ammonia is only up to .5ppm and the nitrite is still at .25 so i am going to do a smaller water change today, i have been doing 2 two a day, one about 50% and one around 80%, and see how things are this afternoon...

 

[waterdrop]

Good work wilde! WD