High Ammonia

[ryno]

hey everyone, my cousin set up a 10 gallon aquarium, and his ammonia is high. he does 20% water changes daily and it still wont go down. he's already checked his tap water to confirm its not already high when he puts it in. i think he is going a little overboard on trying to maintain his aquarium as i have never had any problems, but i cant think of anything else he can do to get it to go down. he adds ammonia remover/detoxifier every 24 hours as the bottle says, does 20% water changes daily. hes added bactieria supliment to help get the bacteria goin, his PH is at 7-7.2. He has a silver lyretail mollie, a black mollie and 3 clown loaches left. he had like 3 guppies and another silver lyretail mollie but they died. any help would be great.

 

[ZoddyZod]

well for a start he is overstocked. Those clowns have no place in a 10g and the stocking may be too much for the filter to cope with.

It sounds like he never cycled his aquarium prior to adding fish? Therefore he is in a fish-in cycle. Please have a read of our beginners section to learn more about cycling to understand the process in detail.

 

[the_lock_man]

The 20% water changes are not sufficient, plain and simple. With that level of fish in a small tank like that, the ammonia level must be through the roof. I reckon you're going to be needing to do water changes in the region of 80-90%, possibly even 2 per day.

And Clown Loaches are definitely not suitable for a 10gal aquarium. It's debatable whether mollies will outgrow it.

 

[ryno]

i agree with yall on the over stocked part, ive told him that already but he is just in love with his clown loaches. he's talking about getting a bigger aquarium (how big idk) and the filter came off of my 30 gallon cause i got a new filter for mine. and he didnt let it cycle long enough, he set it up and only let it sit for 2-3 days before adding all the fish.

 

[Staxx]

if the filter came off your old tank. it should already be cycled...

unless of course you washed it with straight tap water or replaces all the media inside before you gave it to him.

 

[eggo]

he may have a dead fish under/behind a ornament adding to the ammonia spike

 

[ryno]

if the filter came off your old tank. it should already be cycled...

unless of course you washed it with straight tap water or replaces all the media inside before you gave it to him.

it was washed because i had takin it off a couple weeks before i gave it to him, so it was just like starting new. but it should help overfilter it,(after it gets a good cycle going) shouldnt it?

he may have a dead fish under/behind a ornament adding to the ammonia spike

he said he when the last fish disappeared, he looked under and behind everything trying to find it, but he couldnt find a dead fish.

 

[Staxx]

over filtering is always a good idea. i have a masive filter on my 180. it does something like 1250lph.

it sounds wrong but with over filtering you can slightly overstock(as long as your on top of your maintenance aswell) people do it happily with cichlids so it should apply to other species IMO

obviously only overstock with appropiate sized fish. not clown loaches in a 10 gal and so on

 

[ryno]

thanks for the help everyone