Rain Water issues

[Robi]

So i have had a shrimp tank for about about 8 months in a 21l(roughly 5.5gal) tank after a lot of rain awhile ago i'm in a endless cycle of ammonia spiking a bit really light green and nitrates hitting into the red 40ppm area. but it gets a little higher i do a little water change comes back abit my biological is obviously converting the ammonia etc maybe its not fast enough of enough media i have sponge and a layer of bio noodles. (i have been lightly dosing with extra prime to keep the ammonia/nitrate locked)

Edited September 10, 2022 by Robi

[Biotope Biologist]

Have you tested the rainwater? It may not be a rainwater issue and could be a crashed cycle.

 

How big of water changes do you do and what’s your schedule?

 

The other thing I’m noticing is your ceramic rings are not brown. They should be brown after 8 months. Are you cleaning them? If you do rinse mulm off them you should only use tank water as tap or rainwater could harm or kill your bacteria 

[face]

what's your ph and kh? and is there any nitrite?

[Robi]

On 9/11/2022 at 11:35 AM, Biotope Biologist said:

Have you tested the rainwater? It may not be a rainwater issue and could be a crashed cycle.

 

How big of water changes do you do and what’s your schedule?

 

The other thing I’m noticing is your ceramic rings are not brown. They should be brown after 8 months. Are you cleaning them? If you do rinse mulm off them you should only use tank water as tap or rainwater could harm or kill your bacteria 

tank is yellow on ammonia and slightly has nitrates. (10000gal rain water tank) the noodles were fluro white when i put them in there like a lightish brown now and no only rinse in tank water when i do a water change(once a week usually but sometimes half way in week to depending one if anything is high, i can only do about 25% water change with the shrimp i tried a 50% one time alot died ( i always slow feed the water back in from a big jug i have through airline tube so they dont get a shock special last 2-3 months on winter in Australia.

On 9/11/2022 at 12:06 PM, face said:

what's your ph and kh? and is there any nitrite?

there is nitrite around 0 - 0.25 (the colour is hard to tell sometimes), ph is around 6.6 6.8ish I only have the master test kit so i dont have the kh kit

Edited September 11, 2022 by Robi
miss typed

[face]

the only other thing i can think of could be the prime it can sometimes cause a false ammonia reading you could take a sample of the water and let it sit for a few days see if the ammonia goes away.

[gardenman]

That small of a tank with that many plants actively growing, and having been established as long as it is, would make me think that something else is going on. Overfeeding would be one option. Shrimp don't produce a lot of waste. They're tiny little things. If the water going in isn't the issue, then my suspicion is that something else is going on. Maybe something died under one of the rocks and is decaying? Maybe uneaten food has accumulated. You have CO2 and actively growing plants. I'm guessing you're also fertilizing the plants. Maybe the fertilizer is adding ammonia? Ammonium nitrate is a very common fertilizer especially in the DIY plant tabs. If you've got ammonia in your water, you've got plant food there for the plants. They should strip the ammonia out pretty quickly. I wouldn't add any additional fertilizer for a bit and see if the problem doesn't resolve. It could be that ammonia is somehow leaching from the gravel or rocks in some manner. (More likely the gravel.) Shrimp require very little in the way of biofiltration to remove their wastes. You're not keeping koi or huge cichlids. Shrimp are tiny little things that don't produce a ton of waste. You shouldn't be seeing ammonia levels at all keeping shrimp in a planted tank that's been established for a while.

[Robi]

On 9/11/2022 at 11:29 PM, gardenman said:

That small of a tank with that many plants actively growing, and having been established as long as it is, would make me think that something else is going on. Overfeeding would be one option. Shrimp don't produce a lot of waste. They're tiny little things. If the water going in isn't the issue, then my suspicion is that something else is going on. Maybe something died under one of the rocks and is decaying? Maybe uneaten food has accumulated. You have CO2 and actively growing plants. I'm guessing you're also fertilizing the plants. Maybe the fertilizer is adding ammonia? Ammonium nitrate is a very common fertilizer especially in the DIY plant tabs. If you've got ammonia in your water, you've got plant food there for the plants. They should strip the ammonia out pretty quickly. I wouldn't add any additional fertilizer for a bit and see if the problem doesn't resolve. It could be that ammonia is somehow leaching from the gravel or rocks in some manner. (More likely the gravel.) Shrimp require very little in the way of biofiltration to remove their wastes. You're not keeping koi or huge cichlids. Shrimp are tiny little things that don't produce a ton of waste. You shouldn't be seeing ammonia levels at all keeping shrimp in a planted tank that's been established for a while.

I recently did pull out some elodia that smelled funky. I changed from the little tube I used to a zip tie and sucker.