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Ammonia spikes?


Hally M.
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Quick question. What are other reasons are my tank producing ammonia at such a rapid rate. I am doing a med trio on this tank but the last few times I've done it it's never spiked this quickly. I've been doing daily water changes of 35% and it won't let up. Water continues to cloud. The tank has been running for about 2 years now. The waste load isn't that heavy. There is plenty beneficial bacteria and lots of surface area for it to develop. I did a deep cleaning and siphoned every last bit of gravel yesterday and after the water change the ammonia is still greenish. I can't get it back down to yellow. What do I do?

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What is the substrate, how new is the substrate? (I see you're saying the tank is 2 years old)

On your test kit, did you follow the directions for "vigorously" shaking the liquid.  I've heard that's extremely critical.  I don't remember what test it is that requires it, but just that tidbit.

Are all fish accounted for? (Check the filter too)

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There can be several causes.

If it has been a while since a gravel vac, it can actually disturb the bacteria to gravel vac.

If it took you a while to refill the aquarium and the glass dried, all the bacteria on the walls died.

Meds in general can be harder on bacteria.

Changing water when it contains chloramine, when using a dechlorinator breaks down into ammonia.

Some test kits provide false positives of ammonia with some dechlorinators like Prime.

We personally don't feed fish during meds usually for these reasons and the fish are usually stressed and eat less anyway causing uneaten food to be worse sometimes.

Where I would start, fill a bucket of water, use dechlorinator, stir it and test it like 15-30 minutes later, any ammonia? If so I'd also test the tap water to see if there is ammonia.

After that If the tapwater does not produce any ammonia after dechlorinating. I'd change water until its 0.5ppm ammonia and then stop feeding until the aquarium processes it to zero.

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I definitely did shake vigorously. All fish are doing good and  after searching the gravel and filter everything is accounted for 🙂

The substrate is Eco-Complete and it's the same age as the tank. Thank you for your help!

I was continuing to do some research and found some interesting facts about how dead or decaying plants can cause ammonia spikes. There are a lot of plants that need pruning. Could this be the culprit?

 

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Is the source of your water treated?  Or a well?  If it is a public water system I would check it.  Basically follow what Cory said.  
I was wondering a couple things- size of the aquarium, what type of filtration are you using?  When you did water change did you service/clean filters?  Did you clean the glass of the aquarium when you changed water?  What types and how many fish are in the aquarium?  Did you feed your fish before testing water and if so how soon after feeding did you test?  If using external filters (hang on back or canister) did you turn them off while charging water?  And if so how long?  

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The pH of the water is important for the nitrogen cycle. If the pH is low, the nitrogen cycle tends to suffer a bit. The good news is a low pH makes ammonia relatively harmless. There's a bit of a trade-off there. Disturbing the gravel bed can disrupt the cycle briefly, but it should rebound.

I'm a bit intrigued why you're using the med trip on a two-year-old tank. I'm assuming you had a health issue of some sort. The med trio is more of a broad spectrum, "if anything's there and we can't see it this should stop it" type of approach for new fish. It's not so much a treatment as a prophylactic to be used for new fish. The med trio when used as directed by the Coop for new fish is really more of a preventative than a cure. The Coop specifically tells you not to follow the package directions for the meds when using the med trio to treat new fish. I tend to think they're assuming you aren't buying obviously sick fish and the med trio should stop things in their early stages when used as directed by the Coop. As the Coop say themselves, "If you can clearly identify the illness that your fish has, only use the specific medication for that disease and following the dosing instructions on the package. Maracyn treats bacterial infections, Ich-X treats fungal infections and some external parasites, and ParaCleanse treats internal and some external parasites." That phrase "and following the directions on the package" is kind of important as those directions are vastly different from the med trio instructions.

If this is a quarantine tank and hasn't been recently occupied, the bacteria load could have diminished due to a lack of food. Now with fish in quarantine there may be more ammonia than the diminished population of bacteria can handle. The tank should rebound and get back into a more normal state in a relatively short period of time. If you're treating sick fish, I might go for a more targeted approach than the med trio approach. If it's a quarantine tank situation then stick to the med trio.

Check your tap water for ammonia. Check the pH. A low pH makes relatively high-levels of ammonia less of an issue. And try not to get overly concerned. Things tend to work out in the end.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 6/5/2022 at 3:33 AM, Cory said:

Some test kits provide false positives of ammonia with some dechlorinators like Prime.

I think I got this goin on.  10 year old tank, 0 ammonia reading always.  Can't remember last time I had ammonia.  Within the last week switched from AquaSafe Plus to Prime. I now have .2 ammonia reading every day.  So, I've been changing 25-30% water every day (and consequently, using Prime with the new water going back into the tank).  Have not seen the .2 reading go down.  Another variable is I added 5 fish from quarantine, but I honestly don't think that is the issue because my tank is quite a bit understocked.  I have a dirty old HOB filter, a 2-week old sponge filter, plus sand is helping with filtration as well.

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