Major Ammonia Strike

[mattmanjoy]

hi guys

posting this for i need huge amounts of help. Yesterday i posted a picture of a gourami that i thought was pregnant only to be told it was male (oops) and it looked liked he was starting to get a disease.

now i get home from work today and look at my tank and i see that all of my barbs have died (4 in total) and one algae eating shrimp is dead as well (only one i had)

ive just tested my water stats and the readings are awful
ammonia is at 2.0
nitrite is off the scale
nitrate is around 10

ive just looked at the rest of my fish (2 gouramis, 5 plattys 6 tetras 1 red tail shark and 2 plecs. most of them always seem to be at the top of the tank trying to get air.

what could of caused this. i dont approx 30% water change on sunday which was the first time for about 6 weeks (partly down to laziness and also partly due to if it aint broke dont fix it. the tank was staying clean with only minimal algae building up on the inside of the tank)

Background to tank is ive had it up and running for 6months, unfortunately i wasnt told by my fish store about fishless cycling but now i wish i had. recent test with the tank showed it to be cycled though.

what shall i do? just daily changes to try and get rid of the problem or see if my fish can stick it out and if they dont almost start from scratch again and do a fishless cycle. or if someone lives in the milton keynes area that can temporarily house my fish so i can do a new cycle id be open to that as well

thanks

matt

 

[tom_os]

you need to do a big water change and get it back to zero now. also leaving it 6 weeks is asking for trouble. you should be doing about 25% a week.

 

[foley69]

agree with the above weekely water changes are the minimum of maintenance to keep on top of things at least 10% a week should be done as a routine any more is better i usually do around 15-20% WC a week and that keeps my tanks in good health of course until my tex and bichir grow then i will be doing more

 

[mattmanjoy]

have to admit that i was doing 25% every tuesday until recently. that cant be what have caused all these problme though can it

 

[OldMan47]

It is broke and it's time to fix it. You need to do 50% water changes every hour until you get your ammonia down below 0.25 ppm and your nitrite down below 0.25 ppm also. Your fish will welcome the change and you will probably see them start looking a little better by the time you get nitrites that you can measure but don't stop there. There is no such thing as just doing a particular water change every week. It needs to be guided by your water chemistry. It is rare that one of my tanks needs a weekly water change because of two factors. I stock my tanks fairly lightly and I am not afraid to do a big water change instead of lots of small ones. A 25% change every week is the same as a 50% change every 3 weeks in terms of the final chemical concentration. Before the change, the tank getting a change every 3 weeks will be in worse shape but if your stocking is light enough, it won't really get bad. I measure as needed and change water when my tests tell me to. If I have lots of fish compared to my usual stock, I test more often and usually change more water more often.