Insufficient Filtration

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OP, it seems you completely submerged your bioballs. Bioballs are better in a wet-dry application. If the waterfall noise bother you, I suggest add a canister filled with ceramic bio material like matrix or eheim substrac pro. or slowly replace the bioballs with them.

and don't listen to fishermanbob. Your filter is suppose to convert ammonia to nitrate.
 
ecoli73 said:
OP, it seems you completely submerged your bioballs. Bioballs are better in a wet-dry application. If the waterfall noise bother you, I suggest add a canister filled with ceramic bio material like matrix or eheim substrac pro. or slowly replace the bioballs with them.

and don't listen to fishermanbob. Your filter is suppose to convert ammonia to nitrate.
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I completely agree that the bioballs are a bit submerged... but i accidently added a bit extra water to the tank when i did the last water change a few days ago, they are not normally that submerged.
 
Have you added any medication recently? How old is your test kit? are you using a liquid test kit? Or testing strips? Are you SURE your not overfeeding?

Even so i suggest cutting back even more on food. This will help with the ammonia since the fish wont be pooping as much.
 
mr.bigglesworth said:
Have you added any medication recently? How old is your test kit? are you using a liquid test kit? Or testing strips? Are you SURE your not overfeeding?

Even so i suggest cutting back even more on food. This will help with the ammonia since the fish wont be pooping as much.
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I have not added any medication of any sorts lately. The ammonia test kit is only a few months old, and im confident im not getting false readings because i can see signs of ammonia poising on my fish, especially my ray. Im using a liquid test. Im pretty sure im not overfeeding. To give a general idea, i feed the ray about 4 massive pellets a day ( because thats about as much as hes been eating daily at most), the eartheater eats the leftovers of the rays food that he doesnt eat, and i feed the bass about 6 massivore pellets daily although he would eat much more. So i really dont think around 10 pellets of massivore daily is overfeeding in a 180 gallon tank but correct me if im wrong.
 
Sorry even if filters removing ammonia is "common knowledge" I strongly disagree. Out of the 50 plus tanks my father n I have running if we did not do water changes regularly the ammonia would spike sky high reguardless of how much bio media the sumps have.
 
To the OP: You could always add more bio media to the sump. Bio balls don't work very well when submerged. You could try replacing a portion of them with some high quality ceramic or equal bio media. Have you checked the expiration date on your test kit? Sometimes, they can show some dubious results after a while.

To the guy suggestion UV problems - UV-C units only kill free floating bacteria, filter bacteria are not free floating.
 
fishmanbob87 said:
Sorry even if filters removing ammonia is "common knowledge" I strongly disagree. Out of the 50 plus tanks my father n I have running if we did not do water changes regularly the ammonia would spike sky high reguardless of how much bio media the sumps have.
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My old 220 was over stocked. I went a month without a wc and had 0 ammonia. My nitrates were through the roof though.
 
messesb52 said:
As you can see from my pics i just posted, the tank is lightly stocked and i'm also confident i'm not overfeeding.
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Yeah it looks like your sump should be able to handle the load which is moderate in a tank that size.

Check your water supply first and once that looks good, make sure there's no waste built up anywhere in the system. Then either add bio to your sump or add a filter.


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