Ammonia levels won't go down

[colinquilliam1]

Quickest way. Get everything you need ready to go in. Drain your water into a bucket and put your fish in. Take out all the water, strip the gavel and soil out. Go for tropica plant subtrate, its cheap but very good. Cap it with about an inch & half of fine grade gravel/ sand. Put an inch of water in from the tap above the gravel, replant it. Fill half from the tap and half from the bucket. Add a bit of water from the kettle to bring the temp up. Get your heater and filter running. Add some tapsafe or dechlorinater. Fish back in. Make sure you climatise them. Start to finish, 2hrs tops

 

[Dasflames]

Okay I will do this I just need to get the sand. What about the plants thou? Just take them out and try to keep their roots together?

 

[Mebbid]

Colin: you missed a huge part of the post in which he said the tank was cycled with snails rather than fish. That's definitely the cause of the issues because the tank was never prepared to handle the bioload of fish.

Gravel doesn't contribute to ammonia in a cycled tank, but rather increased nitrates. Food whether it gets eaten or rots in the substrate breaks down into the same base materials primarily Ammonia and phosphates.

 

[Mebbid]

Dasflames: Restarting your tank now (including changing out the gravel and decor) will greatly hinder your cycle and set you back quite a ways. There's a lot of beneficial bacteria on that decor and gravel that would be getting tossed out.

 

[Dasflames]

But still if I took the gravel out and replace it with sand wouldn't it be easier to clean and then it wouldn't get stuck in the bottom?

 

[coralbandit]

Have you considered that the ammonia could be coming from the soil ? I believe I have read about this with newly dirted tanks.
What kind of soil did you use?

 

[Mebbid]

They do, but on a dirted tank that's 2 months old it's unlikely.

 

[Dasflames]

I used organic planting soil which I have done twice before this tank and never had a problem like this normally my tanks are perfect

 

[colinquilliam1]

Better to get the basics right first to save issues in the long term. Else it will keep happening.

 

[Mebbid]

If you have tanks currently running, why not take some of the filter media out of them and add it to the new tank?

I haven't cycled a single tank since my very first one, just keep moving old filter media to new tanks.

 

[Dasflames]

I only have the one tank set up right now I currently moved and only set up one tank which I am having problems with

 

[mbkemp]

I have a dirted tank that did not get a tight cap. It belched ammonia for three months. I went through a bottle of prime with that one. Newby me thought cycled media would handle it.

 

[Dasflames]

How did you get it to stop?

 

[Dasflames]

So I was doing some googling and I found that if you put purigen in your filter too early it could mess up your cycle could that be my problem? I put it in there to remove tannins when the tank was about a month old

 

[mbkemp]

Patience and prime. Lots of plants and hardy fish

 

[enrgizerbunny]

I did a cycle with snails I know they aren't fish but they still have a bioload and I did that for 2 months before any fish went in and nitrites are 0.25ppm and nitrates are zero

Yeah not enough compared to fish. Might not have any cycle at all in a relative scale. You'll have to do a fish in cycle at this point. Or take the guppies back and go fishless until you're ready for them. The plants can handle it either way.