High Ammonia

[qkingston]

Hi,
I'm doing my fishless cycle at the moment and had been dosing my tank with 5ppm ammonia to get things going but all is not well;ammonia has shot up off scale (>8ppm). What to do, massive water change?
many thanks

 

[fluttermoth]

Yes, you can get the 'wrong' families of bacteria at high ammonia levels.

Try a 60% change and test again; you want it somewhere between 3 and 5ppm

 

[the_lock_man]

What she said ^^^^^

EIther you've put too much in in one go, or you're following the old Add Daily method, which isn't as good as the Add & Wait method, IMHO.

 

[qkingston]

A practical question;when you say a 60% water change, do you mean 60% in one go, or does 20% a day for 3 days do the same? If it's 60% in one go how do people manage that? Do I need another 7 buckets (given that the water needs to be de-chlorified first? oh and how long do you need to leave the tap water with de-chlorinator (Nutrafin Aqua Plus)before it can be added? My ammonia is still stuck at >8ppm!

Thank you

 

[OldMan47]

Do the numbers. If I change 20% today, my water change tomorrow removes 20% of the new water and 20% of the old water. The third day I am doing a 20% change on about 36% new water and 64% old water. The end result is about 48.8% new water and 51.2% old water. If I do it all in one go, I get 60% new water for my effort. If the daily amounts and the total are larger, the compound interest effect is even greater. A 90% change gives me 90%. A 30% daily for 3 days gives me first 30%, then a resulting 49% old and 51% new then about 34.3%/65.7%. I would need to do 3 more of those 30% water changes to end up with an actual 89.2% new water change.
I would drain the tank and add back straight dechlorinated tap water. Measure the result and decide how much ammonia you need to get to about 3%. That is enough to get things going nicely and you can add your first 5% dose when it gets down to zero. If you mess up the calculation, the 3% target value will mean that you probably won't go over a real 5%.

 

[-Jo-]

Im in day 32 of my fishless cycle - and I know the pain of adding too much ammonia in the start of the cycling believe me! did a 50% water change, left it for an hour, and then tested the ammonia levels again.

 

[qkingston]

Thanks for that Jo, I will have to do that, just trying to work out how to de-chlorinate 60 litres of water in one go!

 

[qkingston]

OK, I did a 60% water change 6 days ago and the readings were as follows:
Ammonia 3 ppm, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 2, pH 6.5, Temp 28 deg C
After testing over the last few days it is now:
Amm 1.5, Nitrite 1, Nitrate 20 Temp 28

Question is what do I do now? Do I dose up the ammonia to 5ppm and then leave it a while "add and wait" method and do I want to take the ammonia up to that level? I understand that the bacteria need something to feed on

Thank you

 

[mozcheez]

What was your last ammonia reading (before the 1.5ppm you just got)? And let us know when you had last dosed (and up to what ppm).

 

[qkingston]

Hi,
It had been gradually dropping from the 3ppm after the 60% water change. I had been following the daily dosing method but ammonia had gone off scale!!! so I have abandoned that for the add and wait method-just not sure what to do next?

 

[mozcheez]

I would wait until the ammonia got down to 1ppm or lower (so hopefully just a tad bit longer), then dose back up to 4-5ppm. That's what I've been doing with my tank, and it seems to be working well. I'm at the point now where the 4-5ppm of ammonia is back to 0ppm in 24 hours (but I still have high nitrites), so I just keep dosing back up. There's no need to test it more often than 24 hours in my opinion, and if you noticed the ammonia is dropping very slowly, you could opt for maybe 48 hours.

You just need to keep dosing the ammonia back up (when at 1ppm or lower) until your nitrites test at 0ppm. Then there are a couple more steps, which you're hopefully familiar with. You can refer back to the fishless cycling thread here: http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/113861-fishless-cycling/

I'm still new to all this, but I'm happy to continue helping if I can

 

[qkingston]

OK this is getting dull, week 8 of fishless cycling and the ammonia level is still dropping slowly (4 days to drop from 6ppm to <1ppm),nitrites stuck at a stubborn 0, temp at 28deg C. Why is this not working?
In desperation!