Dying Fish ,ammonia Spike

[jezzer]

my 125ltre tank has been up and running now for aboout 6 weeks . over the weekend just gone i lost 5 fish in the space of 2 days ,1 of them being my new siamese fighter. when i checked the water i found that the ammonia level had gone mad. ive since tried everything i can think off to get this level down but ive had no succes with any of the products that ive gone out to buy .the remaining of my fish are looking bad and i dont really dont want to loose anymore , can ne1 help plz

 

[2excitedkids]

my 125ltre tank has been up and running now for aboout 6 weeks . over the weekend just gone i lost 5 fish in the space of 2 days ,1 of them being my new siamese fighter. when i checked the water i found that the ammonia level had gone mad. ive since tried everything i can think off to get this level down but ive had no succes with any of the products that ive gone out to buy .the remaining of my fish are looking bad and i dont really dont want to loose anymore , can ne1 help plz

New myself, but I do know that what you need is lots of water changes with dechlorinator of course!

 

[murphyk32]

try posing in either the discussion area or if its an emergency, in the emergency...

Murph

 

[hondadal]

Ammo lock made by api aquariums sometimes take ages to mature a new tank just take it slow, be patient you`l get there in the end the advantage of ammo lock is it detoxifies ammonia so the bacteria can still work on getting rid, thus maturing the filter

 

[waterdrop]

my 125ltre tank has been up and running now for aboout 6 weeks . over the weekend just gone i lost 5 fish in the space of 2 days ,1 of them being my new siamese fighter. when i checked the water i found that the ammonia level had gone mad. ive since tried everything i can think off to get this level down but ive had no succes with any of the products that ive gone out to buy .the remaining of my fish are looking bad and i dont really dont want to loose anymore , can ne1 help plz

New myself, but I do know that what you need is lots of water changes with dechlorinator of course!

Yes. this is correct. jezzer, how are things going now? Water changes are the key to uncycled aquariums that have fish in them. By doing repeated 50% (let's just try that figure for starters) changes you can rapidly drop the concentrations of the two poisons: ammonia and nitrite (NO2) so that your fish can "breath." When fish gills take in oxygen from the water, ammonia is a side product. Fish waste, excess food and dead plant material all reduce to ammonia. In the wild this ammonia dilutes in the large bodies of water to nothing. In an aquarium it can build up rapidly and kill fish.

To do a water change you use a siphon, removing water to a garden, bucket or drain. Take advantage of the water removal to stir up the gravel and remove some of the debris that is helping create the ammonia. Use a dechlorination/dechloramination product like Prime or Stress-Coat to remove chlorine from the tap water you refill with. Use your skin to roughly match the temperature of the water. You can add half of the correct amount of dechlor directly into the aquarium at the beginning of the refill and the rest near the end. When you have the type of emergency you are describing, where ammonia or nitrite are detectable, you can do these water changes with as little as an hour between them, then test to see what you've accomplished. It shouldn't take too many water changes to get ammonia and nitrite down to zero. Then, depending on your fish load, it will take more or less changes, of greater (50%) or lesser (25%) amount, to maintain these zero readings. Other than a dechlor product, no other chemicals are needed or desirable.

The other thing that -is- very much needed is a freshwater test kit with enough accuracy that you know what is going on with ammonia and nitrite. In the practical world of today, those are liquid (reagent) based tests. Test strips are not accurate enough. If you have already bought test strips, put them in your supply closet in case some day your liquid tests run out. Go out and buy a good liquid based kit. The API one is used by many here and is very good. Read up on cycling here on the site - it can take up to 6 weeks to get all the desired bacteria grown in the filter so you won't have to do all these water changes.

~~waterdrop~~
ps. sorry for all the words, was having my morning coffee

 

[jezzer]

cheers for the advice, but at the end of my tether now as ive just lost another 3 fish in two days, ive done everything that i ben told to do but the buggers are still dying, im starting to think that ive chosen the wrong hobby . BLOODY FISH , have you ever singled out 1 fish that you really liked , i did which sounds daft but just got home from work to find him dead on the bottom of thje tank

 

[waterdrop]

sorry for your loss jezzer

From the sound of it, you may have received some poor advice from the fish shops.

I think one of the things this forum does well is to offer good alternatives to the problems of listening to the shops.

Good luck and hope you get inspired to start over or restart the learning process or whatever feels right to you after some of the sadness has worn off.

 

[jezzer]

sorry for your loss jezzer

From the sound of it, you may have received some poor advice from the fish shops.

I think one of the things this forum does well is to offer good alternatives to the problems of listening to the shops.

Good luck and hope you get inspired to start over or restart the learning process or whatever feels right to you after some of the sadness has worn off.

Thanks but I've used the API liquid tester kit every day & been water changing every day & the ammonia level doesn't change even after 3 50% changes & stiring up the gravel during them.

 

[waterdrop]

sorry for your loss jezzer

From the sound of it, you may have received some poor advice from the fish shops.

I think one of the things this forum does well is to offer good alternatives to the problems of listening to the shops.

Good luck and hope you get inspired to start over or restart the learning process or whatever feels right to you after some of the sadness has worn off.

Thanks but I've used the API liquid tester kit every day & been water changing every day & the ammonia level doesn't change even after 3 50% changes & stiring up the gravel during them.

oh, that makes no sense! Surely you've had some other discussions about this? If you have a given ammonia level and do three water changes in rapid succession it seems pretty unusual not to see a drop in ammonia level. You've measured your tap water, right? Hopefully it is significantly lower in ammonia than the tank and thus should be able to dilute the ammonia in the tank. The tests will be picking up the ammonium created by the ammo-lock but all of that should still be getting noticably diluted. No strange additions like dead fish, plants. nothing unusual like that, right?