I have a 40 gallon rectangular acrylic tank with 1 fantail goldfish and am doing a fish-in cycle. My goldfish is happy, swims around, eats fine, all good. I stated the tank 4 weeks ago, used Seachem Stability and Prime. I had been doing 20% PWC daily, sometimes 2x daily and adding Prime every other day. I have nitrates (.20-.40 ppm, it's hard to tell) and it has been well over a week since I had a nitrite reading of .25 ppm. Nitrite had not spiked any higher than that. My ammonia readings (taken 2-3x daily w/API liquid test) had been 80% at .25 ppm and a few times .50ppm. I have not been able to get the ammonia down, not sure how much of a water change to do. I am waiting to see if the bacteria will feed on the ammonia and it will go down by itself, but I'm afraid to not dose the tank with Prime and affect my fish. I have an external canister filter (Sunsun 304b)with 2 trays of biohome ultimate biological media and mechanical media pads, some bio balls and I had put in filter starter balls in it from the good folks at Great Wave Engineering.
My questions are how can I get this ammonia down and should I not dose with Prime and see if it's just the Prime releasing ammonia and making the reading continue at .25ppm???
Thanks!
My questions are how can I get this ammonia down and should I not dose with Prime and see if it's just the Prime releasing ammonia and making the reading continue at .25ppm???
Thanks!