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Platty Breeding -> Ammonia Problems


fishnewbie
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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! 

 

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Hello and welcome! 😊 My best guess is that your cycle just isn’t keeping up with how fast the babies are growing. That, or there’s a dead fish/snail hiding somewhere and decomposing. Would you be able to share a picture of your tank? Fast-growing or floating plants could help, but I’m not sure what plants you already have.

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I have three water sprites, and two other background plants which are pretty fast growing. The count checks out and I am pretty sure I got everything that died out of there, the only thing I struggle with cleaning is plant material that breaks/falls off. What would you recommend I do about the babies ? I used to have a small angel that helped with population control but I had to remove hom when he got agressive with other fish. 

IMG_1699.jpg

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Nice plants! Those should be doing a great job slurping up your ammonia and nitrates.

After seeing how many plants you have, I wonder if this is an issue with Prime. Other people on the forum have had issues with false ammonia readings relating to Prime for reasons I can’t remember. 😅

I would also recommend not switching out your filter cartridge in the future for as long as possible. If it’s slowing down the flow, try rinsing it in old tank water (like the water you pull out after a water change). You want to keep all the bacteria you can right now!

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I discovered that tidbit about the bacteria one day after I threw out my old cartridge, which was ironic to say the least 😅😂 Thing is, after using prime my ammonia seems to go down then back up, so I doubt that's it. My LFS recommended I trade the two platties for something else to control the amount of babies, and that they may be over-burdening my tank. 

Thanks for your help ! 

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