Last few days been monitoring my aquarium perimeters, Friday was at 0.25ppm and today its around 0.50ppm, the tanks 7ftx2ftx2ft, i have a huge bio load of 4 oscars 2 plecos and a few smaller fish, but my water change schedule is 80% water changes every second day, i've never read ammonia in my tank before, and if I have my water change wipes it, i have tested my tap water (0ppm), my other water perimeters are fine, 20-30ppm nitrates, 0ppm nitrites ph fine, i use prime with my water changes, i gravel vac twice a week, the tanks been running for 3 years or so, all the oscar's are around the 30cm mark, the pleco's are at 25cm, so yea i got no idea what's going on, any help would be awesome, and if you need anything else out of me i'll be monitoring this thread heavily, cheers guys!
Ammonia levels rising?
- Thread starter Wizzah
- Start date
Bring your water to your LFS and see what they test. I have an API test kit and it's never read 0.
Water changes every couple of days with prime or other dechlorinators can indeed give you a false positive.
But if you're cleaning your filters that often I must ask how much biological filtration your system has. Maybe you lack adequate, unwashed surface area.
Try going another couple of days without doing a water change and see if your ammonia continues to rise. Try measuring after a day off feed.
What's your pH? Nitrifying bacteria don't function as well if the pH drops too low, and your ammonia won't be as toxic so you might not notice any unusual behavior. I went to service a tank for a new client last week and her 29 gallon had 4 tetras, 6 large fancy goldfish, and a pleco. She hadn't had a water change in 2 months. The nitrates were 20ppm, the ammonia was 4ppm, and the pH was something below 5 (off the charts). I had to do a 120% water change over 2 hours to get everything clean and drop the ammonia so that I could safely raise the pH. Not to mention I had nearly drained the tank siphoning half the gravel. I had to refill it just to finish getting the crap out!!
But if you're cleaning your filters that often I must ask how much biological filtration your system has. Maybe you lack adequate, unwashed surface area.
Try going another couple of days without doing a water change and see if your ammonia continues to rise. Try measuring after a day off feed.
What's your pH? Nitrifying bacteria don't function as well if the pH drops too low, and your ammonia won't be as toxic so you might not notice any unusual behavior. I went to service a tank for a new client last week and her 29 gallon had 4 tetras, 6 large fancy goldfish, and a pleco. She hadn't had a water change in 2 months. The nitrates were 20ppm, the ammonia was 4ppm, and the pH was something below 5 (off the charts). I had to do a 120% water change over 2 hours to get everything clean and drop the ammonia so that I could safely raise the pH. Not to mention I had nearly drained the tank siphoning half the gravel. I had to refill it just to finish getting the crap out!!
How long does this false positive effect from Prime last? How long after adding Prime would I have to wait until I can trust the results of my ammonia test kit?
