Ammonia Issue

[KTrain]

So I tested my water recently and my ammonia levels blew up from about .5 / 1.0 to 3 - 6. I've only lost a handful of small fish and it's a 150 gallon tank. In addition, I noticed that a lot of my fish are exhibiting signs of ich. I'm guessing this is stress induced by the ammonia. The question I have is this.

What the heck do I do?

I'm already treating the tank for ich but it looks like the medication is burning the skin off my Lima. He's missing large patches of skin and his fins appear to be starting to stop working.

I've already lost a few clown loaches (not a crisis), but I did loose a Tig (a serious crisis). I'm trying to avoid my tank into going into complete meltdown but I just don't know what to do.

I have multiple scaleless fish and live plants as well as driftwood. I have to turn off my filter to treat the fish with ich meds or it just filters them all out (even though I'm pretty sure I got all of the active carbon out of it)

 

[Owain4]

what seems like ich could be just ammonia poisoning. seems like your bacteria in your tank has died off, and caused some type of ammonia spike. i'd get the natural bacteria going first and seeing if that helps, start changing water and adding bacteria like stablize. do you have a quarantine tank??? if so it would help them out stress wise while the bacteria issue in your tank recovers.. the ammonia will eventually turn into nitrite which is almost as lethal, make sure you detoxify the ammonia and help the cycle continue.

also you should keep your filter running so they oxygen, heavily medicated tanks can have low oxygen and kill the fish that way. if you removed your carbon then you should be fine to leave it in

 

[Joe M]

I think that unfortunately you doomed your fish when you shut off the filters. Also, what meds did you use? Catfish are very sensitive to medication.