Help Please - Ammonia Spike Question

[soulFish]

I have a 210 Gallon that is has a FX5 & XP4 on it for filtration. The tank has been set up for about 5 months and doing fine. Now all of a sudden I'm getting ammonia spikes between 1.5-1.0 I'm changing 25% water per day the last two days to lower it. I've stopped feedings as well. All the fish seem fine and want to eat. They are all swimming around ..actually looking great.

What could be causing this spike? I don't have enough hot water to do a 50% change when I get home. And I would be a bit reluctant to do so since the fish all look so great. The water is even crystal clear, no cloudyness in the water.

Should I just stick to the daily water changes? Could my test kit be wrong? If the ammonia is that high wouldnt the fish show signs of stress?

 

[Kitiara]

when was the last time your filters were checked/cleaned? Has anything happened that may have affected the bb in the tank/filters? (medication etc?) Has anything died behind a rock or is there a build up of waste somewhere that may not have been noticed?

As for fish showing stress it depends on the type/individual fish. A year ago I had an ammonia spike - one fish died, the others didn't even seem to notice the high ammonia - including another fish of the same type.

 

[soulFish]

nothing that I can see. I vacumed the tank last night. I went 1.5 weeks instead of my normal weekly water change. But I've never registered ammonia like this. I havent added and meds, and I think all my fish are accounted for. The tank is pretty open and don't see any dead ones. And I also don't see any build up of fish poop. The only thing is I added a larger Bichir a couple weeks ago.. and I just notice my small Uaru has some white skin thing hangin out his butt.. But other that that I just don't know.

I gave the canister filters a cleaning a 3 weeks ago, I rinsed the media off with tank water though.

 

[Kitiara]

Sorry then no idea, hopefully someone else may have a better idea.

I'd keep up the water changes as you are doing, other than that - good luck!

 

[ken 429]

check your water source

 

[ziggy2]

First thing is take some water to your LFS and have them check it and see if your test kit has gone bad. Then inspect the gravel for buried debri. Are you using declor?

 

[itzacraze]

im with the test kit fault theory... unless your tap has ammonia in it then theres no way ammo can hold when your doing water changes daily that for sure would dissapate it.... get a small amount of water test it..... test your tap.... then get an ammonia remover and test again.... make sure you get a new test kit as well get the ammonia test strips for a quik check.... clean the filters and get some ammo lock in there to be safe

 

[soulFish]

thanks guys. I went and bought another kit and retested, with both and now the ammonia seems to be gone????? Weird. It was teh same for two days with a 25% water change. Then I did one more 25% change as it mostly seems to have gone away.

Not sure what it was, but glad it's gone