ive never had this happen before, my 125 i stocked four days ago is kinda worrying me, i had it set up three months before adding fish, cycling with ammonia, then three weeks ago i got 20 zebra danios and 10 giant danios, everything was fine, then four days ago i got a true parrot, severum, acara, and bichir , the zebra danios quickly got eaten, so theres my cichlids, bichir, and 10 giant danios in there and im getting 1ppm of ammonia two days in a row now, i did a big water change and its down to .25ppm but im not sure why, i have three 400GPH canisters on the tank, each filled with eiham substrat pro mostly, i think im gonna pick up a bottle of cycle today just to be safe, but, anyone have any opinions on this, did i just add too many big fish at one time, 4, i dont know, my water parameters are always great, really annoying me, oh, and out of the tap its perfect, no nothing at all, anyway, opinions PLEASE
water parameters freaking out!?
- Thread starter golcondorus
- Start date
To me, it sounds like you added too many fish at one time, and stressed your biological filter. There was only enough bacteria surviving to eat the waste produced by the Danios. Then, you added new fish, and they produced extra waste, but there wasn't bacteria present to process it. Since you added several at a time, this problem was multiplied, and so you're seeing ammonia. Your bio should catch up, and hopefully you won't get high levels of ammonia in the process. I've done this before, and had the same results, and this is the only thing I could come up with.
I agree with the previous post , the ammo should drop fairly quickly as the bio filter catches up . Be careful with removing the ammonia through big water changes - if the fish seem unaffected let it ride or the natural cycle to nitrite- nitrate will be delayed and prolonged .