Nitrite Spike And Drop But Ammonia Wont Go Away

[dshantel83]

I have a 10 gallon tank with three platys that has been set up for 5 wks..My nitrites are finally reading at 0ppm and have been the past 3 days with nitrates at 5ppm problem is my ammonia is continuing to read between .25-.50ppm. I have been doing 20% daily water changes with prime with no budge in ammonia reading..so today I decided to do a 40% water change then tested my water and got a .25ppm reading still. Tested my tap water and it read .50 ppm .I'm using API droplet test kits.What do I need to do to get the ammonia out of my tank? Any help info please would be greatly appreciated

 

[Gvilleguy]

I have the same tap water issue that you do. My tap water tests 0.25 to 0.50 ppm ammonia right out of the tap. From what you have logged, your issue might be that your daily water changes are replenishing the ammonia supply in the tank. Have you tried letting the tank run a day or two without any water change to see if ammonia drops to zero? Maybe your bacteria colony just needs a little more time to process the ammonia.

What is the pH level? I've experienced myself that if the pH drops to 6.0, the nitrification process stalls.

 

[dshantel83]

I have the same tap water issue that you do. My tap water tests 0.25 to 0.50 ppm ammonia right out of the tap. From what you have logged, your issue might be that your daily water changes are replenishing the ammonia supply in the tank. Have you tried letting the tank run a day or two without any water change to see if ammonia drops to zero? Maybe your bacteria colony just needs a little more time to process the ammonia.

What is the pH level? I've experienced myself that if the pH drops to 6.0, the nitrification process stalls.

I havn't tried letting the water run a couple days without doing a water change this sounds like a good thing to try. Ph reading is 7.0 I will let my tank run a couple days with no water change and post my results.

 

[Gvilleguy]

Sounds like a plan. Please let us know how it goes!

 

[waterdrop]

You may be through the woods. The trick when you have ammonia in your tap water is to get through the difficult process of getting a working biofilter and you appear to have done that now. Once you have this good working biofilter it can deal with the added ammonia after water changes just like it deals with the fish waste ammonia. The most important thing to remember is that you are now a special case, different from our normal recommendations in that you should always divide your water changes up to be smaller and more frequent! That way, your fish won't get overexposed to ammonia after a water change. When we say to do a 30% water change once a week, you should do 2 smaller 15 or 20% ones if possible, or do some variation where you do the main gravel-clean-water-change with a smaller amount and then come back a few hours later and do a small simple water change without the gravel clean. Make sense?

~~waterdrop~~