Help Needed Fast!

[heymickey94]

Hi I have 2 hystrix stingrays, I normally test the water once a week and do 25% water changes once a week. Today I noticed that the male was acting strange. He wasn't moving and was buried in the sand, something that neither of my rays ever do. However at the time the female was fine, swimming around as usual. So I tested the water and has a high reading of ammonia,so I quickly did a 25% water change and added water conditioner. Now the female is swimming around and the male still isn't. What do I do? Downstairs in my boxes of fish stuff I have something that removes ammonia. Can I use this in a stingray tank? Should I feed my stingrays their next meal or wait? My plan is to do 25% water changes once a day over the next 3 days will this work? Please help! Thank you

 

[CFC]

Cut back on all feeding until the ammonia reading has dropped and do a 50% water change now and replace the mechanical filter media (if you have any) with new, this should be followed by 25% changes for the next few days, as you probably know ammonia can kill rays very quickly so you need to get as much of it out as possible as fast as possible. I dont know about the ammonia binding treatment so wouldnt like to say yes or no to whether its safe.

Also try and find out why the ammonia spiked, uneaten food trapped in the filter is a common cause or a dead fish hiding inside the decore.

 

[heymickey94]

Ok I just did another water change. What should I change in my filter? I currently have carbon in the filter along with pre-filter and foam. Which of those should I take out? To replace the current media I have filter floss(the cotton looking stuff), more carbon, and bio max. Which of these should I put in. Thank you for all of your help.I forgot to add that the ammonia removing stuff is called ammo lock.

 

[CFC]

Change the carbon and floss, the foam sponges are the biological media and should never be changed unless they are completely falling to pieces.

Carbon is a chemical media and doesnt really need to be in the tank permamently, most people only use it after a course of medication to remove any chemical residues, however in this case some new carbon may help in moping up some of the ammonia.

The pre filter is the mechanical media which catches organic solids before they reach the biological media, this should be thoroughly cleaned or replaced on a weekly basis to prevent dissolved organics building up.

 

[Lhutch]

is tank cycled?

 

[heymickey94]

Yes, the tank is cycled and has been for some time now. I have replaced the carbon with new carbon and now I just have to wait and see what happens.

 

[-germ-]

Ammo-lock has been reported as causing severe spikes, a member (RDD) of this site went in search of info about ammo-lock and is probably the best person to ask, i'll PM him so keep an eye on this thread in case he can provide you with any help.
If i was in your situation i'd purchase some SeaChem Prime at the first opportunity.

 

[rdd1952]

According to the reply I got from API about Ammo-Lock, a normal dose will lock up to 3ppm of ammonia and transform it to a nontoxic form. Unfortunately, it doesn't work on any ammonia that is produced from that point on so you have to add it again to lock any subsequent ammonia. It locks what's there and that's it. The bad part is that it still shows on your test kit so you don't know what you are seeing is safe or not. Using it would probably be better than not using anything at least until the tank cycles again. The key really is figuring out why you got a spike in the first place. Is there anything in the tank other than the rays that could have died and gone undetected as CFC mentioned? Have you added any unusual chemicals recently that could have killed of part of your bacteria?

 

[heymickey94]

The only chemical that has been added is water conditioner, and there are no other fish in the tank.

 

[rdd1952]

Hard to figure what could have caused the spike then unless you forgot dechlor on one of the water changes and it killed off some of the bacteria. Other than that, it's hard to say.

 

[cane76]

how are the rays?
i had a strange ammonia spike in my ray tank not so long ago
done 30% wc everyday for a week

 

[CFC]

What is the pH of the tank and has it changed from the norm recently?

I rarely test my water and when i do its usually just a quick nitrate test to make sure the water changes im doing are keeping up with the end product of the nitrogen cycle but a couple of years ago i started losing fish after water changes for unknown reasons, testing showed the nitrates were ok and so was the nitrites but the ammonia showed sky high and by rights all my fish should have been dead. The tapwater tested ok too so now i was really puzzled, London tapwater is like liquid rock and with regular water changes topping up all the buffers the pH is solid, or so i thought so i never bothered buying a pH test kit.

Being none the wiser towards the problems i bought a master test kit and ran tests for pH and KH, although the KH was where it should be the pH had dropped to 5! This answered why the ammonia was present but not causing problems, the low pH had converted the ammonia to ammonium which is not as toxic but as soon as i did a water change with the pH 7.8 tapwater the ammonium converted back to ammonia and poisoned the fish.

I never did discover what exactly caused the pH drop or ammonium/ammonia spike but i stripped down both filters thoroughly cleaned all the media and replaced the hoses and the tank rectified itself within a few days, my only guess is that my filter cleaning schedule wasnt enough to cope with the high waste producing predatory fish i keep even though the filters were still running as well as they should have been.

 

[heymickey94]

The ph in the tank 7.2. I just feed them bloodworms and it looks like the ate them all so now I will be doing another waterchage right now. I think the reason that the ammonia spiked is bcause recently I have been feeding frozen cyclops which is like dust when it falls it the tank and I thought that the rays would blow in the sand and eat it but I think its just building up in the sand, so when I've beed doing water changes I'm also cleaning the sand. Thanks everyone for all of the help.

 

[cane76]

how big are the rays out of interest?

 

[heymickey94]

The rays are like 7-8 inches.