Ammonia Level

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Gypsy69

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Feb 19, 2008
29
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South East
Hello and thank you for allowing me to post on this site. I have 6 red bellies in a 100 gallon tank and my ammonia and nitrate levels were very high last night. I done a 50% water change along with a a complete cleaning of rock and plant. The tank is about 30% live plants and has one live rock. I clean the tank a minimum of 3 times per week in a 7 day week and do about a 10% water change per cleaning. The fish seem to be fine, but were a little dark in color (at least they seemed a little dark to me). I have raised them from babies and they are now 4 months old and are around 4 inches long. I feed them shrimp as a main source of food. I have double filtration for the tank, meaning I have filtration for a 200 gallon.

Could not doing more of a percent water change cause this, or could leaving uneaten shrimp in the tank for several hours cause this?

I will post some pictures of the little guys later this week and again, thanks for the great members on this site. You guys and girls have the best information on the net for exotic fish.
 
You're not going to want to leave uneaten food in the tank.

Also, you're going to want more filtration. As I'm sure you know, piranhas are messy eaters.

It is good to get on a water change schedule that works for you. I prefer to do 2-3 20% water changes per week but others do one large change every week.

It sounds like you are getting good growth out of them. I'd like to see some pictures.
 
first, i've always been told that ps need 3 times the max capacity filtration for your thank.

second, the more you change your water, the more you take out the bacteria that naturally digest your amonia level. depending on your filtration and stuff, maybe 3 times a week is too much. true that you do small ones, but still.

i personally have 4 times the necesary filtration and do about 30% every two weeks and everything is always fine.
 
unless your filtration is inadequate, there really should be no reason for ammonia and/or nitrites to show up at all in a cycled tank. i'm not sure what you mean by "double filtration for the tank", do you mean that you're filtering 200 gph or do you mean that your filter says that it is rated for a 200 gallon tank? make sure you specify, because when it comes to piranhas, the manufacturer's filter rating is pretty much useless. with a shoal of reds, you should be shooting for around a 10x turnover, meaning that if you have a 100 gal tank, you should be shooting for 1000 gph, you can get away with less turnover if you have a canister filter, and less still if you have a wet/dry.
 
Thanks for your replies. The filtration I have is the Bio-Wheel variety rated for 90-100 gallon tanks and I have two of them. I would have to see what the flow rate per hour is for the units. After the water change and serious rock cleaning on the side where I feed them the PH and nitrate dropped, in fact a little too low. I done the 50% change and a 25% change two days later, so I am guessing I perhaps took too much of the good bacteria. I feel pretty sure leaving the uneaten food in the tank longer than I should have was the cause and I was also perhaps feeding them too much (they are kind of fat). I will upload some pictures for you guys to see. My RBP's aren't too skittish, love to ambush their pray from the planted side of their tank, and thier color is simply awesome. As you can tell I am not a super experianced fish keeper yet, but I raised these guys since they were the size of a fingernail from AquaScape.

Thanks again for your help and replies to my issues. Hope you have a great weekend...
 
you may want to look into upgrading your filtration, two hob filters probably isn't enough to handle a 100 gal tank. before i upgraded to a wet dry and a canister on my 75 that holds my shoal of reds, i was running two penguin bio wheel 350s and a magnum 250 canister and i wasn't really all that happy with the water quality. when it comes to having a shoal of piranhas, you can pretty much throw that manufacturers tank rating out the window, especially since according to them, one of those filters could handle that tank, and there is no way that it could.
 
H#LL i got 4 Penguin 1140 Powerheads rated at 300 GPH all hooked up to seperate undergravels, 2 Penguin 350Bs rated at 350 GPH, and 1 FX5 rated at 950 GPH (foam blocks only) or 563 GPH (loaded with media,also my configuration) so at this rate
4@ 300 GPH= 1200 GPH
2@ 350 GPH= 700 GPH
+ 1@ 563 GPH= 563
2463 GPH

so thats 2463 GPH exchange rate on a 125 gal aquarium

2463/125= 19.704

so 19.704 exchanges in one hour

60min in one hour

60/19.704= 3.045

so at this rate with all my epuip my water get cycled every 3.045 mins.
i think thats a good exchange rate and at this rate my amonia level has NEVER been anthing but 0
 
Water changes do not affect biological filtrationbacteria levels. The bacteria you WANT in your tank are attached to the rock, plants, filter, etc. Water changes will only help. Cleaning things such as you mentioned are derogatory to your efforts. The stuff you want out is free floating and in the detritus in the bottom. Vaccum the bottom of the tank and change all or most of the water.
 
A canister is a lot better than teh HOB filters, add a small canister and you force all the water that passes through the filter through the bio media. HOB filters are really not doing much other than circulating the water. They do a little bio filtering and a little mechanical assuming you keep the mechanical part of the filter clean (usually a sponge or a cartridge with a pad). If you want to keep your current setup add some ceramic bio-media to your HOBs. That will greatly increase their bio filtering. I run a tank with H multispinosa a wild T meeki with some rare wildbearers that has no filter now. There is some algae but all I use is a bubble wall and weekly water changes. The fish spawn about once a month, but I have never bothered to try and get the fry out. I am switching the tank over to blonde honduran red points so I will probably break it down and start the filter again.
 
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