Jeklabo

If it's too late to raise the pH and cycle the tank, then what would you suggest doing? If I leave things be, will bacteria grow eventually?

Thank you all for the information so far. It seems that my issue is that my water is too soft and acidic to effectively grow a healthy colony of bacteria. My question now is what to do now? If I raise the pH then the ammonia will become too toxic for my fish to handle. Should I just raise the pH and do daily water changes to compensate? I have a lot of plants that seem to be helping and the fish seem healthy, so should I just leave the water as is and let the bacteria grow slowly but surely? I really appreciate all the answers that you all have provided but now I need to know what to do next, thank you. Thank you for the information, it's a relief to know that the ammonia isn't causing many issues for the fish at that low of a pH. I wanted to ask, then, what should I do now? Can I leave the tank be since the fish seem okay and the plants are growing well? Will the bacteria grow eventually and start breaking down all the ammonia?

I don't have another tank to put them in, unfortunately. I also tested my tap water and its not the source of the ammonia, although I haven't tested the tap water with the aquasoil yet. What do you think I should do? Is it possible for me to grow a colony of bacteria in my water still? Or should I just leave things be since the fish all seem okay. I do have a ton of stem plants which is nice.

I had no idea, thank you. I'll try some methods of raising the pH and alkalinity.

I have a small layer of aqua soil underneath the sand. Do you think it could be the aqua soil? Will it be doing this forever? I have not had my water tested at the lfs, so I suppose it's possible that there is something wrong with my tests, I'll take a sample to them when they open on Wednesday My water is clear

Hello everyone, I really need some help. About 3 months ago, I decided to completely re-scape my 20 long with new plants, hardscape, and substrate while keeping the fish I already had. I removed my fish, emptied the tank, and started over. The tank came out really nice but it's been problematic. I knew that I would run the risk of completely losing my cycle if I did this, so I made sure to re-use the same 2 filters (and I didn't clean them so they were still nice and dirty and covered in bacteria) from before, I re-used some of the plants from the previous setup, I re-used a couple of the rocks from the previous setup, and I re-used about half of the water too. I took as many steps as I could to ensure that I would be carrying over as much of my cycle as possible, and even added bottled bacteria just to be sure. The new tank has a ton of new plants that have been growing extremely well, and it has more surfaces than my previous setup did for bacteria to grow on. There was an algae bloom during the first couple weeks of the new setup and I cleaned up most of it but I still left a good amount of the algae alone. My problem is that every time I test the water the ammonia is always around 2.0 ppm, and the Nitrite and Nitrate always sits at 0. the pH of the water is between 6.0 and 6.4. The tank is currently stocked with: 6 Black Phantom Tetras 6 Skunk Corydoras 1 Honey Gourami 3 Nerite Snails None of my fish appear to be in poor health due to the water quality, thankfully, but I don't know what to do anymore. Initially, I tried doing 25-40% water changes every other day, but the ammonia would always rise again the next day. Then, I tried waiting around a week between water changes to see if that would help (but not any longer since I don't want my fish to be swimming in 2.0 ppm ammonia water for too long) and that didn't work either. I added an entire brand new bottle of bacteria over the course of a two weeks, and it made no difference. I always use water conditioner (Prime and sometimes Stress Coat) when I add water to the tank. I'm at a complete loss. I did my homework and took steps to ensure that I was doing everything right and I just have absolutely no idea what the problem can be. I'm thinking that maybe the plants have something to do with it but I couldn't find any answers anywhere. I would really appreciate some advice, I feel so bad having my fish swim around in such ammonia-filled water at all hours of the day.