High Ammonia Levels

[abbie11]

Hi all

I have recently changed (two months ago) from goldfish to tropical fish. I have had the tank (45L) for 3 years and it has always had an interpet duo IPF 3 filter in it. all I added was the heater. the water looks clear and it is clear of algae. fish keep dying mainly guppies and mollies. the neon tetras (3) and 1 catfish are ok. i put in 2 platys and 3 zebra danios in the last week. now 1 of the platys is not looking too good. i was using the strips to test the water and it seemed ok. when i bought the danios i purchased an API freshwater master test kit and was horrified to find that the ammonia levels were very high (8.0ppm(mg/L)). I have always added ammo-lock when doing water changes. i bought a new bottle thinking that the one i was using was not working. over the last week i have done a 25% water change every other day but the readings are still the same. i dont overfeed and use a suction tube that takes the debris but leaves the gravel to empty the water so the gravel is pretty clean. there are two artificial plants and two real plants in the tank. i checked the water from the tap before i put it in the tank and the reading was 0.25 ppm (mg/L). would I be better using bottled water. the other readings were ph 6, nitrite 0, nitrate 10. can anyone advise me please. thanks

 

[thegnu]

i think by using ammo lock you have possibly stopped your bacteria from feeding on it. i would try and find a temporary home for your fish and start from scratch. (recycle)

 

[abbie11]

i think by using ammo lock you have possibly stopped your bacteria from feeding on it. i would try and find a temporary home for your fish and start from scratch. (recycle)

thanks for the advice. Off now to the local shop to see if he will look after them.

 

[scorphonic]

Hay abbie....while your there ask if you can get some mature media from a filter...get loads of bacteria for the filter to kick start the cycle again.

Sorry to hear about the tank, best not to use any of those products...you dont need them if your filters contain enough bacteria to process the ammonia and nitrites. Good luck with it

 

[rdd1952]

The tank should be cycled already if you just switched from goldfish to tropicals (no down time). The only problem would be if you severely increased the stocking load but goldfish are so messy, one good sized goldfish would produce as much waste as all the fish you have in it now. Also, if you removed the goldys and went several days before restocking, the bacteria colony would have died off from lack of food (ammonia) in the tank so you would not be cycled any more.

The ammo-loc you are using doesn't have any effect on the cycling. It simply locks the ammonia in a non-toxic form (ammonium) until it can be broken down. You will get a positive reading still because it is present but it won't be toxic. I don't think I would like that because I would never know whether it was toxic or not.

One other potential issue is your pH. While 6.0 isn't bad for your fish, the nitrifying bacteria stop metabolizing at about that level so they won't be multiplying. In effect, your tank would not cycle (or it would be very slow). Here is a good article that explains it.

Last but not least, the deaths may be due to disease they had when you bought them. The chain pet stores like Walmart (not really a pet stoe but they sell fish), Petco and Petsmart don't generally have the healthiest fish in the world. Even some true fish stores aren't very safe.