How does this happen?

[kzimmerman]

So I have 5 tanks currently. A 75g semi-aggressive tank, 75g with 12 mosquito fish, a 75g turtle, 55g pao cambodgiensis, and a 20g Tetraodon schoutendi. All of the tanks have been up for about 6 years except for the 20, up about 6 weeks. I’ve been having ammonia problems in the 55g that just kept spiking. I’ve removed all the wood, swapped a filter from one of the 75s, bought ammoguard and an ammonia alert badge thingy, I’ve even resorted to zeolite.
And lots and lots of water changes.
So today I tested all the tanks for pH, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and phosphate.
All of the tanks were 7, .25,0,5. Only the phosphate varied any. The kicker was the tap water. pH was weird, it was a green color. The ammonia was.25 everything else was 0.
So the question is, how does a biological filter with years of maturation, suddenly develop problems handling the bioload?

 

[TwoHedWlf]

If nothing dramatic has changed, like a huge increase in load or feeding and given how quickly a mature filter adjusts to changes in bioload....
How old is your test kit? Test kits do go bad, ammonia alert badges are very inaccurate.

 

[tlindsey]

How old is your test kit? Test kits do go bad

Agree

 

[Rocksor]

Test your KH (buffering capacity) from the tap and in the tanks. Your water supply could have also changed recently.

 

[kzimmerman]

I bought a new test kit and tested them side by side. I did 5 tests, and the old kit gave me 2 bad tests, so I tossed it. The ammonia badge is really just to tell me if ammonia is present, don’t really care about accuracy because I’ll be breaking out test kits. I’ve gone to boiling ro/di water with the test tubes for 30 min to insure they aren’t contaminated.
I’ve been doing this for 38 years now, with very few breaks. I’m also a tremendous nerd, and I research everything. I’m getting really damn frustrated here.

 

[JoseCatala]

I'm having the same issue on my 125.... For almost 2 months. I've done the daily water changes, added Stability, tried Dr. Tim's. Added Prime daily. I have 3 Filters on this tank. 2 Eheim 2217 and a Tidal 75. No fish deaths, although, one of my Blue Acara's isn't looking to well at the moment.

2 Severums
10 Blue Acara's They spawned and these are what's left all about 2-3 inches
1 Angel fish
5 Rainbows
2 Dennison Barbs, these guys are about 8 years old
1 Siamese algae eater
2 small bristle nosed plecos

Accept for the 2 plecos... All of these fish have been in the tank for at least 2 years.

I've stopped adding prime and have gone back to my weekly water changes. I use RO water and reminerialize using seachem's Discus buffer and Brightwell's gh/kh shrimp buffer.

PH is 6.8
Nitrite and Nitrates at 0
Ammonia according to API test kit is 2-4 ppm

It is a new kit and I've tested my other tanks which come out to 0 on the ammonia test.

The blue acara's spawn about every two or three weeks.

Puzzling and frustrating.

This is one of the two tanks that does have fake plants in them along with some live plants.

 

[TwoHedWlf]

Prime can cause false ammonia readings, so you're best to wait a day or two after dosing with Prime.

 

[kzimmerman]

Everything is staying the same. I’m going to replace all of my test kits. Unfortunately, we have a death in the family, and I don’t know when that may happen. Maybe today, I don’t know.

 

[kzimmerman]

Is it possible that there is something in the water that is giving false readings? I’m on well water, and there is plenty of iron in the ground. It’s not uncommon to have ammonia in the water when there is iron, but it doesn’t seem to be processed by the biological filter.

 

[kzimmerman]

So I got some test strips, not my favorite way, but it was the only thing available. The general hardness was zero and the carbonate hardness turned blue, which is not a color on the scale. I have wood in all my tanks, but the pH is holding at 7. If there was no carbonate hardness, then the water would be acidic, don’t you think?