Cloudy water with constant high ammonia, FED UP

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kitnerjr

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Sep 26, 2011
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I've been battling this since Thursday.
Currently I have a 55 gallon tank at 80 degrees with a AquaClear 70 power filter with the sponge, active carbon and ammonia remove bag.
Also have an LED bubble wand in for added oxygen as well and an EcoBio block.


PH 7.0
Ammonia 2.0
Nitrate .5
Nitrite 0

I am at my wits end here, I have been doing every other day water changes but by the end of the day the water is cloudy again. The ammonia levels are through the roof even immediately after a water change. What is going on?

Tank is housing fish no larger than 3" at this point in time.
1 dwarf gourami
1 pink gourami
2 balla sharks (yes i know the potential size and will upgrade)
1 African butterfly
1 peacock eel

Everyone is in check and is acting fine, my eel is a little lethargic but still swimming and eating fine.

Not sure what else to do at this point, I have added some ammolock in to keep the fish safe from the ammonia. Should i try replacing my filter media?
 
How long the tank been up for??? Sound like you might still be going through a cycling process.

IMO That alot of fish for that size tank and filtration. IF it was me, i would try thinning out the stock some.
 
It's been up for about 6 weeks now, never had a problem like this before.
Is there something I can do to clear it up?
 
Can you get any mature media from another tank?



Short term a good water change with a water conditioner and something like api ammo lock would be my first port of call even if I managed to get hold of mature media.
 
D33N said:
Can you get any mature media from another tank?



Short term a good water change with a water conditioner and something like api ammo lock would be my first port of call even if I managed to get hold of mature media.
Click to expand...

At this point no, unless I can talk my LFS into a few gallons, but that would be a rough trip home.
I was thinking of adding a canister filter as an addition anyways, would this be beneficial?
 
Another thing I noticed this morning as well, the water has like a film at the top, kind of oily.
 
I have been feeding them once a day, flakes in the morning, and just enough that they all eat it up within the first few minutes.
I do feed the eel blood worms in the evening, but through a dropper and only half a cube.
 
I started with 4 little school fish, and moved them to a snail breeding tank I have once the tank was cycled.
I went through a nasty episode of ick about 2 weeks ago so I was doing every other day water changes along with that as well. Friday I was the first time in about a week I have done a water change and that was because of the ammonia readings, I change the water with a gravel vacuum to try and get the bottom clean as well. The only change I made to the filter was adding the activated carbon back in, and took the tube out to clean it since it was getting a little grungy.

I thought about possibly removing the sponge and washing it in some of the tank water?
 
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