seems making more of this than needs to be, ammonia test with APi always seems to show .25 unless you drop it on the carpet and look at it standing up, then it becomes bright yellow. if it is yellow at all is 0 ammonia, ammonia will show a def green, not a perhaps green.
Ammonia issue help
- Thread starter Carpsalmon
- Start date
Let me try to explain without sounding too dumb or too smart
You size the amount of K1 with the lbs of fish you have plus the lbs of food you feed. Bio media is designed to grow bacteria and we all know what this bacteria does so no sense explaining that part. If you change too much water the K1 never gets a chance to grow the bacteria needed to support all the fish in the tank, in a sense if your water is too clean then you end up using the K1 more as a mechanical filter than a bio filter. Discus keepers do this all the time, they keep their prized fish in a tank with only a sponge filter and do 50 sometimes 100% water changes a day. This is fine as long as you keep that routine and do not add or remove fish. The system is balanced but is dependent upon your cleaning regimen.
If you follow the above mentioned process of over cleaning or doing to many water changes then your bacteria in the bio media will be small (because they do not have enough food to support a large colony). If any upset condition happens say you forget a water change, you feed an extra lb of food one day, or you add another fish guess what happens, you shock your system and it goes back into a cycle type state. When the bacteria gets a large food source they begin to multiply. Then you get back into your routine of heavy water changes and the bacteria loses it's food source and begins to die off which pollutes the water as well.
Now you take the approach of large bio media and less water changes. Think of a pond or even a lake, sure there is lots of water to dilute any changes in environment but there is also a crap ton of bacteria that helps keep the water chemistry stable. Same in your tank, that is where the eco system comes in. If you have a large happy colony of bacteria living in your filter system with ample amount of food the likely hood of a small system change like adding a fish or feeding heavy one day will not show any change in the water parameters. This is because there is enough bacteria to act as a buffer. There might be a small ammonia spike (small enough you cannot read it) when you make a change but the bacteria that is established can react fast enough that it is a non issue. If the colony is small and weak then any change can kill the whole colony or if the colony does not die you have to wait for it to continue to grow to support the change in the environment.
This concept falls in line with what a lot of hard core salt guys are doing. They have enough bacteria and micro organisms living in their system such that they hardly have to do any water changes. Imagine a balanced salt tank getting huge water changes. Everything would die.
Well said Fishdog - that was what I was alluding to. That's the beauty of a drip system. You are continuously dripping the same amount of fresh water into your tank(s) so your your system stabilizes. I've recently connected my 6 tanks together to a central drip system and my rays have really perked up.
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The thing is that if I dont do a water and just do one at 25 percent, the ammonia readings jump to .5-1, I don't even want to know what would happen if i didn't do a water change all day.
Ammonia is not an instant kill. If the level gets too high for your rays they will show signs of stress and most likely stop eating. If they are behaving normal and eating let is go. Check ammonia as much as you want and observe. Let it go as long as you can before changing the water. 300 gallons is a lot of water and your load is not that high. I would recommend cutting back on their feeding to about half until it levels out.
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So is all your media submerged media with small pores plus the spongey stuff you added?
If so, my guess is your actual problem is that most of the media isn't getting much water flow - the water will be making contact with the outside layers of media but barely getting to the innermost substrate.
If I could filter a 300 gal tank that housed 3 large rays using a 30 gallon aquarium in which I had *maybe* 12 gallons of scrubbies.. People love to overthink ray tank filtration but there's really no need. KISS.
I'm gonna try this for a day and see what happens. I have been feeding extremely lightly as is. Thanks for the feedback
Yup its all submerged and I thought that was an issue too, so I threw a pump that recircs that water back through the inside of the media.
Did 1 waterchange per day and ammonia spikes to 1 with light feeding, im wondering if aeration is an issue? Should I buy different media?
