Help - fish gasping!! Please help!

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

sallyjano

Aquarium Advice FINatic
Joined
Jan 26, 2014
Messages
692
Location
Laguna Niguel, CA
Just did a 40% water change and noticed some of my fish (guppies and mollies) gasping at the top after.

I tested my tank and tap water. .25 in my tank and 1ppm in my tap!

I've read up on it - everyone says in a cycled tank don't worry about it as the BB will take care of it in a day or two, just use Prime to neutralize the ammonia until then. Well the problem is I did use Prime already! I just added another 6ml to my 60g and another dose to my 10g (no fish showing any signs of distress in the 10g).

So....if I already used prime why am I getting a .25 ammonia read? And why are my fish distressed?

What can I do?

Please help as soon as possible! Thanks
 
Prime does not remove ammonia, but it transforms it into another substance, ammonium. Ammonium is not harmful to fish. Sadly, the ammonia tests we use show ammonium levels as ammonia, too. In other words, the ammonia test you are using after adding prime is not a good indicator of how much harmful ammonia there is in the tank.

Do I read correctly that you have 1ppm ammonia in your tap water?

And is the tank cycled - you've been able to reliably process water that has some ammonia in it, to produce readings with no ammonia, and some nitrate?
 
Prime does not remove ammonia, but it transforms it into another substance, ammonium. Ammonium is not harmful to fish. Sadly, the ammonia tests we use show ammonium levels as ammonia, too. In other words, the ammonia test you are using after adding prime is not a good indicator of how much harmful ammonia there is in the tank.

Do I read correctly that you have 1ppm ammonia in your tap water?

And is the tank cycled - you've been able to reliably process water that has some ammonia in it, to produce readings with no ammonia, and some nitrate?

Yes it's 1ppm in the tap water. .25 in the tank.

Yes the tank is fully cycled.

The thing I don't understand is that if Prime has turned the ammonia into ammonium, why are the fish gasping at the top?
 
Yes it's 1ppm in the tap water. .25 in the tank.

Yes the tank is fully cycled.

The thing I don't understand is that if Prime has turned the ammonia into ammonium, why are the fish gasping at the top?

That is a good question. As far as I know, lowering the ammonia levels should change their behaviour quickly, so there is probably still a problem :(

Something else to consider - what is the PH of your water at the moment? Ammonia becomes more toxic the higher the PH so it might be worth knowing that.

Do you have access to a water source free from ammonia? Bottled or store-bought water, maybe?
 
That is a good question. As far as I know, lowering the ammonia levels should change their behaviour quickly, so there is probably still a problem :(

Something else to consider - what is the PH of your water at the moment? Ammonia becomes more toxic the higher the PH so it might be worth knowing that.

Do you have access to a water source free from ammonia? Bottled or store-bought water, maybe?

PH is about 8 so yes pretty high. But I just checked on the tank again and it seems that all but 1 of the fish have now resumed normal behavior. After I saw them gasping I added a dose of Prime - looks like that has now worked.

Thanks so much for your help.
 
Any time! (just easier than getting bottle water. plus bottled water can have weird pH etc)
 
Glad to hear they are better. Good luck with keeping them that way. Let us know how it goes.

Thanks Masha. I am happy to report that this morning all looks well. I've not tested the water again yet - I'll give it a bit longer for the BB to work but looks like the fish are fine now. I will just make sure I use plenty of Prime for all future water changes!

Thanks
 
IME, in such a situation, ensure you start the air pump immediately and get the water aerated as much as possible. Prime does not act like magic, it will take some time for it to convert the ammonia to ammonium. Unfortunately due this time taken, sometimes the more sensitive species will either die, or be irrevocably injured. Sadly due to a similar mishap, I recently lost all my yellow shrimps sans 1. Best option is to keep spare, aged water in a container for these emergencies.
 
IME, in such a situation, ensure you start the air pump immediately and get the water aerated as much as possible. Prime does not act like magic, it will take some time for it to convert the ammonia to ammonium. Unfortunately due this time taken, sometimes the more sensitive species will either die, or be irrevocably injured. Sadly due to a similar mishap, I recently lost all my yellow shrimps sans 1. Best option is to keep spare, aged water in a container for these emergencies.

Yes I saw yesterday that it took some time to work. Now I feel bad as once a week with a PWC I'll be subjecting my fish to stress until the prime works. Keeping aged water is not really an option I like the sound of! I have a 60g tank and I'm doing 40-50% changes so I'd have to store 20-30 gallons of water somewhere and then transport it by buckets. Not fun.

I'm wondering if maybe I should just do smaller water changes (maybe 25%) so that I'm putting less ammonia in the tank during changes so it has less impact.

Thoughts anyone?
 
That is a good idea. Also dose half the tank volume and go really slow, then use the more prime halfway through.
 
Back
Top Bottom