what happened toi my bio filter??

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E

efishency

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Jan 25, 2011
12
0
0
cyprus
hello

i have just setup a new tank. i transferred existing and running biological media from my other tanks (without drying it or leaving it more than an hour without food) into an external filter for it. added the fish i had in the previous tank and yup, ammonia! then added two liquid bacterial 'immediate' startups to the filter..nada. brought more lib#ve bio filters media from 2 LFS, added in the filter, still have ammonia.. i dont get it. my hardness and ph havent changed from new to old tank. what is going on??? I also have little zeolite (after the bio media in the filter), which i thought would pick up any ammonia that goes through the bio media. after seeing ammonia, i added more. at the moment im feeding them very scarcely and using liquid ammonia absorbers to keep it low, not zero.

immediate help please!!
 
It'll help to know a little more info. How big is the tank? What's the stock? Most importantly, what kind of filter are you running and what biomedia was transferred? Obviously you're going through at least a mini cycle, so something is amiss. What exactly are your readings of ammonia?
 
Jc1119;4900860; said:
It'll help to know a little more info. How big is the tank? What's the stock? Most importantly, what kind of filter are you running and what biomedia was transferred? Obviously you're going through at least a mini cycle, so something is amiss. What exactly are your readings of ammonia?
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+1

I would stop adding the liquid BB that you get from the pet store. It does not matter how much you put in there it is going to take a little while for the BB to eat the ammonia. It is not instant. If you put to much bottled BB then it is just going to die when there is not enough ammonia to eat. You are most likely going through a mini cycle. Give it some time. And keep testing. If you have added some ammonia detox to the tank you like you said then the ammonia will not hurt the fish.
 
took them from a 250 litre tank and 20L filter, to a 150L tank with a 12L canister. stocking garra rufa fishes, small guys, and guys that grow them recomand no less than 0.7L per fish. i have 100 fish. I know it sounds crazy but thats what the supplier suggested. transferred ceramic rings and eheim substratpro, possibly less than a litre of the existing media was transferred....i think im answering my own question here.... wasnt a good idea. you think its the volume of media? too little and too much fish? are the bio filters working but maybe cant cope with the load?? i havent been feeding them much at all lately, but still get ammonia readings..
 
Yeah you answered your own question. Too many fish for the load. 150l is just under 40 gallons. 250l is about 66 gallons. I run about a liter and a half of bio on my 60 gallon that houses about 25 fish and I'm close to the capacity limit of that tank. Even if all your fish are 1" that's about 100" in a 40. Add all the bio you want, you're still going to have filtration problems with that load. Probably not what you want to hear, but that's the math
 
Just a thought.
Maybe the bulk of the biological work was being done in the tanks, not in the filters.
If that were the case, it would explain your situation.
WC your way through this and all could turn out well.

BTW: I would stop adding a mix of stuff trying for instant cycle and ammonia control. Prime and WC will get you there.
 
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