High Ammonia Readings

[pieman]

Since my reading is so high, is there anything besides daily water changes that can lower the levels fast (maybe some sort of chemical) that has no effect on the fish or any long term effects on the tank?

 

[mandy82]

IMO, doing water changes is the best thing for your tank. You don't want to add chemicals unless it's absolutely necessary. How often are you changing your water to bring down the ammonia levels?

 

[pieman]

I was doing a gravel vac every 2 days which ment I had to replace around 30% of the water (58 litre tank). My current readings are 4.0 ammonia pH 7.9 nitrite 0.25 nitrate 20.

Some of my fish have also caught whitespot, i'm not having a good day as you can imagine.

I am not sure if this is because I added 3 plants to my tank today and a C02 thingy.

 

[qwikimpss]

Adding plants and CO2 wont raise your ammonia levels. How long has the tank been set up? I would test 2x a day and change water as needed, it will slow down the cycle but you want your fish to live right?

 

[cujoho78]

Hi. I think that you should concentrate on getting the ammonia down for the benefit of the fish before worrying about the plants. Water changes are probably the best way to go. A reading of 4 is really high. You'll have to do a bunch of water changes over time (like maybe 2-3 per day) but you need to make sure that the water you add back is as close to the old water as possible as far as pH and temperature go. Since your fish have whitespot, you are in double trouble as the medication needed to combat that may kill off the good bacteria in your filter (although i'm not totally sure on that part). The water changes may further stress the fish compounding the whitespot problem. I have heard of a product that you put in your filter that will convert the ammonia into a less toxic form. The only thing with this product is that while it converts the ammonia, it will still show up when you test the water. So you wouldn't really know what the real level was. So that's where the water changes still come into play. You'll just have to do your best to get the ammonia level down without stressing the fish more than they already are. Good luck.

 

[mandy82]

When my tank was cycling, my nitrites shot up after the ammonia had come down. What I did was 25% water changes every 3 hours until my numbers dropped significantly. After that, I tested the water daily and did more water changes as needed.

 

[pieman]

Just done 1 water change for today, planning another 2, yeah the weird thing about this whitespot is im not sure if it is that, because the spot that was on one of my black widows head is gone, so unless these plants came from water with anti-ich I can't think what else was.