Amonia won’t go lower than 0,25

[Aqua Nut]

2 things immediately pop in to my mind here. 1 would be the source water, sometimes your tap water may have ammonia in it. 2 would be your under filtered, what do you have filtering the tank? Your filter might not be fully established or just not enough decent media to house the colony of bacteria required.

 

[skjl47]

I test before a water change, that would aprox after 24 hours

Hello; OK. That answers the question that came to mind. After 24 hours you have a small ammonia reading. Seems like that should be 0 with a fully cycled tank. Not sure it will add anything useful but perhaps a test right after a WC.

There was a discussion recently about large WC in another thread. While that topic does not seem to apply as you do regular small WC. An argument presented (not by me) went along the line that when a tank has ammonia present and live fish, we then tend to do large or often WC to remove some of the ammonia and add fresh water to dilute what may be left. This makes sense in that we know ammonia harms the fish so a WC is done to help.

However in a new tank we are in effect removing/reducing the very thing the ammonia "eating" bb need to establish larger numbers. The bb has less of a vital nutrient so in turn struggles to increase in numbers. The proposed argument in the dilemma becomes that the WC helps our fish but at the same time slows the multiplication of the bb at the same time. Perhaps delaying or prolonging the fully established cycle. I have been giving this some thought and admit is seems to make sense. At least I have not found a flaw in the thinking so far. I cannot recall the members name just now and am not trying to claim credit for the idea.

You seem to have done things right in taking a few weeks to do a fishless cycle and also adding fish over time.

 

[CrazyFishLady1201]

Hello; OK. That answers the question that came to mind. After 24 hours you have a small ammonia reading. Seems like that should be 0 with a fully cycled tank. Not sure it will add anything useful but perhaps a test right after a WC.

There was a discussion recently about large WC in another thread. While that topic does not seem to apply as you do regular small WC. An argument presented (not by me) went along the line that when a tank has ammonia present and live fish, we then tend to do large or often WC to remove some of the ammonia and add fresh water to dilute what may be left. This makes sense in that we know ammonia harms the fish so a WC is done to help.

However in a new tank we are in effect removing/reducing the very thing the ammonia "eating" bb need to establish larger numbers. The bb has less of a vital nutrient so in turn struggles to increase in numbers. The proposed argument in the dilemma becomes that the WC helps our fish but at the same time slows the multiplication of the bb at the same time. Perhaps delaying or prolonging the fully established cycle. I have been giving this some thought and admit is seems to make sense. At least I have not found a flaw in the thinking so far. I cannot recall the members name just now and am not trying to claim credit for the idea.

You seem to have done things right in taking a few weeks to do a fishless cycle and also adding fish over time.

This idea does make sense. Ammonia builds up over time because fish release it as part of their respiratory process, plus poop and urine so you would think that the conversion from ammonia to nitrates would be simultaneous to the release of ammonia and the 0.25 ppm reading i have would only be an excess and not the full bio load of the fish inside the tank, and so technically i wouldn't be removing the source. Im assuming this excess would then be necessary to make the colony grow but since I'm removing it the colony stays the same size or grows too slowly.
Is this correct?

My main concern at the moment is that I can't seem to find prime in any of the LFS in my city and my EBJD has started showing signs of stress. Although he is still eating, he is not as active as he used to be and two days ago he started to clamp his pectoral fins when at rest (before this he would move them even when asleep).

I believe i am under filtering tho, since I only have one canister filter rated at 525 GPH, it has ceramic rings, bio balls, filter pads and filter sponges.

 

[skjl47]

Hello; Not sure anything in a sister thread currently on the forum will be of benefit but here is a link.

https://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/...ice-sudden-ammonia-spike.695804/#post-7843188

Hello; Also This occurred to me. Please correct if I get this wrong. You acquired the large tank we are now discussing to house a pleco which was out growing a smaller tank? One thing done to get pretty much an "instant" ( or at least very quick) cycle in a new tank is to harvest some bb loaded material from the old established tank. No need to do a "fishless cycle" at all.

 

[CrazyFishLady1201]

2 things immediately pop in to my mind here. 1 would be the source water, sometimes your tap water may have ammonia in it. 2 would be your under filtered, what do you have filtering the tank? Your filter might not be fully established or just not enough decent media to house the colony of bacteria required.

I have tested my tap water and parameters are 0 ammonia 0 nitrite 0 nitrate. And I do believe Im under filtered, I thought they would be fine with a single canister filter until I got the money for a second one (2-4 months since they are all very small), but now i see i was mistaken.

Its a Sun Sun HW-304A (its what they had at my LFS at the moment), its rated at 525 GPH and it has 4 baskets, one with bio balls and ceramic rings, one with course sponge and filter pads, one with fine sponge and one with carbon/zeolite mixture.

The sponges were seeded media from a 70 gallon aquarium.

 

[CrazyFishLady1201]

Hello; Not sure anything in a sister thread currently on the forum will be of benefit but here is a link.

https://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/...ice-sudden-ammonia-spike.695804/#post-7843188

Hello; Also This occurred to me. Please correct if I get this wrong. You acquired the large tank we are now discussing to house a pleco which was out growing a smaller tank? One thing done to get pretty much an "instant" ( or at least very quick) cycle in a new tank is to harvest some bb loaded material from the old established tank. No need to do a "fishless cycle" at all.

The tank where I got the seeded media was much smaller than my current tank (70 gallon vs. 125 gallons) and was lightly stocked which is why i dosed 5-6ppm liquid ammonia for a few weeks until the colony was able to precess it in a 12h period.

This tank (125 gallons) was bought for the pleco, which i've had for 5-6 years. I actually bought this tank a year ago but only set it up 3 months ago. The cycling process took a little under a month and then i added fish slowly.

 

[CrazyFishLady1201]

i forgot to mention I was feeding twice a day, in the morning i feed the angels, danios, parrot and EBJD and at night i feed two veggie wafers to my pleco (he doesn't eat much during the day).

Now I started feeding all the fish in the late afternoon because i read somewhere that ammonia production reaches its max around 90 minutes after feeding.

 

[skjl47]

Ammonia builds up over time because fish release it as part of their respiratory process, plus poop and urine so you would think that the conversion from ammonia to nitrates would be simultaneous to the release of ammonia and the 0.25 ppm

Hello; Add to these ammonia sources the decay of organic things such as uneaten food bits.
Not that this is related to your ammonia issue but back when I had a large pleco I did not like the large stringy poo. I put in some Ramshorn snails who consumed the large amount of nutrients remaining in the pleco poo. Vegetarian animals can sometimes only get around 50% of the nutrition (food value) from what they eat and the rest is in their poo. The snails consumed that and turned it into snail and left much smaller and less unsightly poo. For some reason I cannot justify I think an animal (snail) making the poo is better than having the decay process go on.

Im assuming this excess would then be necessary to make the colony grow but since I'm removing it the colony stays the same size or grows too slowly.
Is this correct?

Hello; I think so but admit to not following for sure. To me their is a balance between the bb population and the tank ammonia bioload. It is dynamic and in constant flux over time. Throw in new fish or overfeed then the level of ammonia can jump up for a while ( ammonia spike) during the time it can take the bb population to increase by reproduction.

Remove some fish or clean out excess food then the bb population may be dormant "rest" for a time but will eventually die back to adjust to the smaller amount of ammonia.

I can't seem to find prime in any of the LFS

Hello; PRIME is liquid form of SAFE. Also there are other makers of water conditioners. PRIME happens to be a popular one on this forum.

i am under filtering tho, since I only have one canister filter rated at 525 GPH, it has ceramic rings, bio balls, filter pads and filter sponges.

Hello; Here is where I drift a bit from the current thinking. I do agree that the bb colonize the filter media because of the water flow. I think the bb also will colonize most any solid surface in a tank as a biofilm. To me this means most tanks can house a good bb population with what you have and the other tank surfaces. Best I can recall about your stocking you do not seem to have a heavy stocking for the size tank.
Those with large stocking loads may need the extra filtration. I do get the sense this is your issue.

 

[robham777]

I am not 100% sure that you are under filtered for the fish that you listed in an earlier post, but adding more media to the existing filter may help the situation until you are able to add a second filter. The media provided by the manufacturers is usually far less than the capacity of the filters. Also ammonia toxicity increases with temperature so having a temp closer to the lower range for your fish would be better than having it at the higher range.

 

[CrazyFishLady1201]

Hello; Add to these ammonia sources the decay of organic things such as uneaten food bits.
Not that this is related to your ammonia issue but back when I had a large pleco I did not like the large stringy poo. I put in some Ramshorn snails who consumed the large amount of nutrients remaining in the pleco poo. Vegetarian animals can sometimes only get around 50% of the nutrition (food value) from what they eat and the rest is in their poo. The snails consumed that and turned it into snail and left much smaller and less unsightly poo. For some reason I cannot justify I think an animal (snail) making the poo is better than having the decay process go on.


Hello; I think so but admit to not following for sure. To me their is a balance between the bb population and the tank ammonia bioload. It is dynamic and in constant flux over time. Throw in new fish or overfeed then the level of ammonia can jump up for a while ( ammonia spike) during the time it can take the bb population to increase by reproduction.

Remove some fish or clean out excess food then the bb population may be dormant "rest" for a time but will eventually die back to adjust to the smaller amount of ammonia.


Hello; PRIME is liquid form of SAFE. Also there are other makers of water conditioners. PRIME happens to be a popular one on this forum.


Hello; Here is where I drift a bit from the current thinking. I do agree that the bb colonize the filter media because of the water flow. I think the bb also will colonize most any solid surface in a tank as a biofilm. To me this means most tanks can house a good bb population with what you have and the other tank surfaces. Best I can recall about your stocking you do not seem to have a heavy stocking for the size tank.
Those with large stocking loads may need the extra filtration. I do get the sense this is your issue.

I do believe bacteria colonise all available surface, but i think another filter can do no harm, and perhaps my filter can't get to all the water in time to eliminate ammonia quickly enough.

The snail idea is very clever. I do 15-30 gallon water changes everyday after feeding time because i have white sand and the whole poop thing is very unsightly. The fact that you can see ANYTHING that has fallen on the substrate does help to keep the tank cleaner.