Help... Ammo is back

[RooRoo]

HI everyone

It seems my cycle has crashed, and I am getting ammo spikes. When I got home from work Wednesday, I did water tests, and ammo was up to almost 3ppm!!! I immediately did a 50% water change. Thursday morning I checked and it was down to 1ppm, after work I did another water change about 20%. Checked again Friday morning down to about .50ppm. Did another 50% water change before work. Now I am home from work and checked and ammo is down to .25ppm. Seems to me with all the water changes, it should be down to zero by now. I am getting very concerned for the fish. I have 4 platies in a 40 gal tank. I didn't think they had that big of a bioload. I dosed the tank with Prime too, I thought that took out some of the ammo also?? Still showing .25ppm

I have an API test kit, and a filter rated for a 75 gal tank on a 40 gal tank.
I thought I was doing stuff right, now I don't know. Any advice? Will the fish be okay in .25ppm of ammo? Seems no matter how much water I change, it stays there. I checked my tap water to be sure and it tests zero.

 

[HUKIT]

How long has the tank been set up? Early stages of fish in cycle could have very high ammonia levels unless your doing daily water changes. Prime doesn't remove ammonia it converts to a nontoxic form which will show up on test results. What are your nitrite and nitrate levels at?

Try to keep the ammonia and nitrite levels below .25ppm for the long term safety of the fish, it creeps up change 50% of the water.

 

[RooRoo]

Tank has been cycled for about 2 months. Nitrites show zero. I have trouble reading the Nitrate one, but I think its at 20ppm. If Prime turns the ammo to non toxic form, does that mean as far as the fish are concerned, it won't hurt them and its okay to show .25ppm?

 

[HUKIT]

Tank has been cycled for about 2 months. Nitrites show zero. I have trouble reading the Nitrate one, but I think its at 20ppm. If Prime turns the ammo to non toxic form, does that mean as far as the fish are concerned, it won't hurt them and its okay to show .25ppm?

Yes as long as it's .25ppm or lower the fish will be fine, Prime can evenly be double dosed in emergency issues. With such a small bioload I'm surprised it's creeping up like that, did you remove any filter media or forget to add Prime during a water change? Any power outages, or filters not running, and meds used to treat illness can wipe a biofilter?

 

[RooRoo]

I've been racking my brain to figure out what I might have done. All I can think of is maybe when doing pwc I forgot to add prime to one bucket of water. I usually do 4 buckets for a change. I usually end up putting in more than needed in each bucket though, so even if I forgot one, I think I;d have more than enough to treat the water as it was poured in. I'll keep thinking, maybe it was something else.