Feeding During Ammonia Spike?

[Legacy]

I've had my archerfish for about 31hrs now and they seem to be desperatly hunting. The only problem is that I'm currently in a situation where I have a massive ammonia spike and I was told by the LFS that I should refrain from feeding for about 2-3 days. I'm on my second day and I know they're hungry because one of them happened to catch a little fly that got into the tank.

My NH3 levels are reading between 4.0-8.0ppm, yet the fish are active and eating w/zero signs of stress.

When is it safe to feed them? I have several feeding options available to me. I have live mealworms, live baby crickets, and frozen bloodworms. Seems to me the bloodworms would be the messiest. The crickets might lose a leg or 2 during the consumption, and the mealworms will be forced to go down whole.

How much longer do I need to wait to feed them? They're acting like they're starving.

Thanks in Advance.

 

[mattrox]

Do a 50% pwc in the morning and another at night to drop the levels and then feed sparingly and keep monitoring. No use have dead fish from starvation.

Whole live foods would be the way to go IMO.

 

[Legacy]

I keep getting told not to change the water until the NH3 and NO2 zero out or I will throw off the cycle... is this true?

 

[rich311k]

No it is not true. Water changes will not slow down your cycle much and your fish will appreciate it. You only dont change water if you are cycling fishlessly.

 

[Legacy]

Great! I'll change it constantly until it's down.

 

[Legacy]

just did 50% PWC, theyre getting better. NH3 is at 4.0ppm from 8.0ppm.

 

[Legacy]

After a huge scare, almost death I thought, they decided to bounce back and eat at least 1 baby cricket each. That's good news right? Although, now I'll need to really stay on top of the PWC even more than before to keep it under control. I still can't get the NH3 to drop below 2.0ppm