Ammonia Emergency in Non-Cycling Tank?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
There are worries, unfortunately. If a couple of the gars don't get a pellet or two they will begin to seriously damage other fish in the tank.

When I say a few over three days, I did not mean each night, I mean literally 3 pellets have entered the tank in 72 hours just to keep a couple of them content.
 
Also, for those who might bring it up, keep in mind that these fish were probably hemorrhaging internally, so it isn't okay to allow things to be this way because the fish is living. Gars are not immune to ammonia.
 
Any meds added to the tank recently to crash filter? You have a huge bioload. How often were you doing the 30% water changes? I don't know what your sump looks like but 30g sump on a 500 is small. Id make sure that thing is packed with biomedia and the canisters too. My sump is a 180g with about 40g of bioballs and about 20g of matrix and ceramic balls. I do 70g a day water change on the auto changer 5 days a week and a 150-200g big clean once a week. My ammonia is always reading slight levels.
 
No meds added though I did do a full clean on one of the fx5's about a month ago, could have damaged the system.

The sump might be 40g, but it's still not huge. About 2/3's of it is bioballs, and then the last third has the pump, some media and the ceramics I just added. The two fx5's both have one tray stuffed with ceramic balls. I can add more to the canisters, though not sure if I should be shutting them down and opening them up during this ammonia process.

My water change routine had been pretty lax before this incident, now I've been doing 35-40% changes daily.

It takes me a long time to do a water change unfortunately, I don't have any system set up other than siphoning into a basement sink and then filling. What's ironic is that my tank has never looked clearer than it does right now.

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And Piscine that is a cool article. Gars are very hardy and tolerant for sure, but it can eventually catch up to them. At least I am working with tough fish during this treatment.
 
I had a siimilar problem, my ammonia was 0ppm 6 days ago 3 days ago was off the chart, and my 7.4 ph dropped to 6.0 2 ac 110's and 2 fx5's on a 90 gal tank. water changes of 35% in the am and 15-20% in the PM and all is back to normal.

Lost one 8 inch managuense, this is what caused me to check all my levels, unsure if he was the cause of the spikes, or a casualty of the spikes
 
Tskstorm said:
I had a siimilar problem, my ammonia was 0ppm 6 days ago 3 days ago was off the chart, and my 7.4 ph dropped to 6.0 2 ac 110's and 2 fx5's on a 90 gal tank. water changes of 35% in the am and 15-20% in the PM and all is back to normal.

Lost one 8 inch managuense, this is what caused me to check all my levels, unsure if he was the cause of the spikes, or a casualty of the spikes
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Thanks for chiming in, glad you got yours straightened out. Unfortunately mine did not straighten out in 3 days, lol, but hopefully after this weekend I have some good results.
 
im in the same boat as you. Im sure at this point it was because my PH dropped to low and killed my Bio filter i have been at it for 4 days now got my ph up to 7'S and the amnonia as of to day dropped to around 4
 
I am starting to think that I might have had the same thing happen., pH crashed and killed BB, now I'm dealing with the after math
 
after my ph being back at 7.2 last night its back down to 6... back to the drawing board.... lol back to water changes, going to add some new drift wood this weekend
 
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