Hi there, I have a planted 20 Gal with an Aqueon quietflow 10E Filter, which I modified to add Bio-Matrix to( as much as I could without affecting the flow too much). I had the tank for over 4 months now, and it was cycled or so I thought, until my platties started breeding. At first my parameters stayed fine, but for the last three weeks or so my Ammonia has been refusing to go down to 0 ( always between 0.25 and 0.5) (Although my nitrites stayed at 0 and my nitrates never went up more than 10). I tried adding the Seachem Stability, seachem purity bacteria for over two weeks daily, but so far, the only thing that seems to help with Ammonia is prime, which sends it back to 0 for a day or so, before it starts going back up again. All I have in the tank right now is two female platties (and their many many babies), a cherry shrimp, a bubble mouth pleco, a Siamese algae eater, and a zebra snail. They are all small with the biggest being the pleco at around an inch and a half.
I had a bubbler and sponge on the filter intake for a while, I trited switching out the filter cartridge, I even removed a few of the other fish and returned them, but nothing seems to help. I have bio-guard which should help with the bacteria when switching out the filter cartridge, and the new cartridge has been there for about a week now. I changed it because the old cartridge was significantly slowing down the flow.
Thanks in advance for your help!