Dang And Blast! (Ammonia Now)

[ShoC]

Soooo...

I have had my tank setup for over 2 years and recently had parasites with my catfish.
treated my tank with Sera nematol and lost 2x gouramis (possibly 3) come to the end and did an 80% water change at 23litres at a time
conditioned the water with Link to water conditioner * Tetra Pond aqua safe * treated with 5ml to the 23litres

and I seem to have
ammonia 0.25ppm ( I think its 0.25ppm I find it hard to decipher the colour at that lvl )
Nitrite 0ppm
Nitrate 0ppm

I assume it's 0.25 due to nitrate being 0ppm 2 weeks I think after water change at 80%
Could it have anything to do with the conditioner? It's overdosed but thats fine these things are okay on that, and my concern tho which I just noticed is it improves slime coat development (I'm thinking caution should be move away from that incase they overproduce?)


Now my main question is (changing ammonia to ammonium, will the tank still cycle? yes I know water changes are ideal but I work shifts and its hard for me to have time)


and what the hell caused this, either the sera nematol did!!!! or I got chlorine in which I cant see how


thanks for reating


ps. I'm 160litres (not over stocked but and my fingers now ache to much to type my fish list)

 

[PDSimon]

you'll need to do water changes to get it back to 0 asap

i'm not sure about medicines/conditioner. You might want to post this in the emergency forum.

What test kit are you using? With mine(API test kit) 0- 0.25 is easy, 3-5 is difficult though.

you're meant to use the conditioner 1.5 times if its straight into the tank, just once if its before you put it in the tank I believe. How much are you over dosing it by?

;m pretty sure ammonium still cycles the tank but someone else will have to confirm that...

 

[Brujo]

it sounds like the tank is going into a mini cycle or maybe a full cycle, i know that meds can affect the beneficial bacteria, also the dead fish contribute a lot of that, probably a lot more that the BB can handle, just do water changes to remove the ammonia and keep and eye on it untill is stays at 0

 

[ShoC]

I think I'll do a retest again in a few days, I'm sure the Sera nematol caused this..
do you think I should stop that dechlorinator and start using kingbritish? I never had this problem untill changing also.

 

[the biffster]

what parasites were you treating
if you dont mind me asking

 

[ShoC]

I belive internal parasites, he stopped eating and lost weight.

I have a thread in the emergency section, after treating he started going poop again but its not a healthy poop nor have I seen him eat properly all other fish are happy and keep getting bombarded with eggs

ill topic

 

[the biffster]

nematol is an antibacterial i guess if so that might be one of the reasons you have a bit of filter die back
as for the plec i dont know what to say cant really tell from the photos i know it wont help the filter much but have you tried upping the temperature a notch on two and place some cucumber in the tank and see what happens

good luck the biffster

 

[ShoC]

Sera Nemtaol is for parasites

Medicine

 

[the biffster]

Sera Nemtaol is for parasites

Medicine

tank parasites or fish parasites

there are some for tank parasites were you take the fish out to dose and some for fish parasites

 

[the biffster]

i have read up on it its similar to one that discus breeders
use to worm discus but dont see how it done what it has
if it was dosed in the proper dose how ever there is is
fish that are not tolerant to it in the dose you were supposed to
for the size of the tank

 

[waterdrop]

Hi ShoC, I'm coming on your thread late so you may not see this but what the heck..

You asked:
"Now my main question is (changing ammonia to ammonium, will the tank still cycle? yes I know water changes are ideal but I work shifts and its hard for me to have time)"

The answer is yes, the tank will still cycle just fine. Bacteria process ammonium just like they process ammonia, no difference to them.

Later in the thread, PDSimon commented:
"you're meant to use the conditioner 1.5 times if its straight into the tank, just once if its before you put it in the tank I believe. How much are you over dosing it by?"

This is confusing a couple of different issues. The idea of overdosing conditioner by 1.5x to 2x is all about lowering the risk caused by the water authority overdosing the chlorine/chloramine chemicals they use. They periodically do this based on whether they find high bacterial counts in a distant reach of their pipe system. When they do it, they can sometimes do serious damage to your filter bacteria. Of course though, its usually rare. The decision to overdose then is best based on whether you have rare or expensive fish that could not be as easily replaced vs. whether the expense of conditioner pushes your budget (fairly unlikely if you can afford a tank and fish in the first place but sometimes we have teenage hobbyists on a tight budget and things like that.) So it doesn't matter whether you are pre-dosing to buckets or directly to the tank from this standpoint.

The issue with bucket pre-dosing and direct tank dosing is that if you direct tank dose then you should be doing 1x (or 1.5x or 2x if you deem the risk important) for the full tank water volume (with bucket pre-dosing you are only dechlorinating to the bucket volume.)

The third issue relevant here is the brand of conditioner itself. We're quite positive on Seachem Prime as a conditioner that not only saves money on a per-dose basis due to its high concentration but also because of positive feedback about its ability to neutralize other problems associated both with new tanks in their first year but also tanks having mini-cycle and other problems. Some reports put Amquel+ as another product with similar positive characteristics. In your case ShoC, it couldn't hurt to get a smaller bottle of Prime for use at 1.5x dosing during your mini-cycle and then go back and continue to use up your pond dechlor after the mini-cycle event is over. I'm not say other products can't be fine, just that this is the kind of feedback we've been seeing among the members for a long time.

I also agree that you may just be detecting some damage to your bacterial colonies because of some anti-bacterial effect of the medicine. But it should also be considered that this is a mature tank. It may be that all the big substrate-clean-water-change activity has just stirred up more debris than usual and that, combined with the medicine effect on the bacteria, has left you with a mini-cycle situation that must be dealt with using significant water changes! Let us know the duration of your mini-cycle episode, we should always try to mentally collect these as a group so we continue to get a feel for them, collectively.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

I would like to add on to what WD said. Another reason you may be seeing traces of ammonia right after a huge water change is the water itself. When I do a huge water change, like your 80% one, I always see a bit of ammonia the first few hours. What is happening to me is simple. My water supplier uses chloramine which is a combination of chlorine and ammonia. When I treat my new water with Prime, the chemical bond is broken, the chlorine is eliminated and the ammonia is made into its less toxic form. That means my new water gives me a reading of about 0.5 ppm at first. Once my filter has had a few hours to work on it, the ammonia is again at zero. If you have somehow damaged your bacterial colony with medications, expect to see some residual ammonia reading after using any decent dechlorinator.