How do I lower my ammonia the correct way?

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.

joshclovis

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Mar 10, 2010
Messages
3
Location
NC
When I first got my 55 gallon tank 2 weeks ago I began with a few danios to start the cycle. My water got cloudy a few days later and then cleared up. I assumed the cycle was finished so I added a few more fish. I went up to 11 small fish and then the cloudy water started again. I wasn't getting much circulation in my tank so I lifted up my water output to create more circulation. This cleared up my tank in 2 days. My ph is good however my ammonia levels are a 1ppm. How can I get this to 0ppm. I went to a lps and they told me not to do a pwc for at least a month. I don't know to do. Any advice? Thanks a million.
 
You'll need to do water changes... Lots of them possibly. You need to keep the ammonia as close to 0 as possible. Thats the problem with cycling with fish. Ammonia is quite toxic to fish, but required to establish a cycle. It takes alot longer with fish than without. Read through the links in my signature on the nitrogen cycle and cycling with fish. Should help you understand what you'll need to do
 
If you know someone (a friend preferably) try to get some established substrate (gravel) or filter media and get them in your tank and filter. It will help seed your tank with the good bacterias that are explained in mfd's links.
 
Your lfs is wrong in telling you not to do any water change!

It is true that doing water changes will prolong the cycle, but not doing them & letting the ammonia & nitrites levels rise will ensure that you will lose all the fish. <Some fish might not even survive the cycle, and if they do, they are usually so weaken that they die pre-maturely.>

If you want to keep the fish healthy, you need to keep the ammonia levels below 0.5, and nitrites less than 0.25. You do as much pwc's as needed to maintain those levels until the tank cycles & levels drops to zero. The lower you keep the levels, the longer the cycle will take, but the fish will thank you. And as others have said if you can seed the tank, you will definitely reduce the time needed, and also decrease the ammonia & nitrite peaks.
 
You know what.. I too cycled with fish, 3 cherry barbs to be precise in a 12g. I also had the bacterial bloom. I kept testing my water for over a month with my test kit and continuously saw no reduction in my ammonia (which stayed around .5ppm ~.25ppm) with no signs of nitrite or nitrate. I was like, what the heck, why is my cycle stalling??? So I went to a private LFS and spoke to the shop keeper (who seemed very knowledgeable and helpful) and he recommended that I put in a bottle of Tetra Safe Start. To tell you the truth, I was a bit reluctant about the bacteria in a bottle thing. From what some people were saying in forums, there has been some mixed results and debates over it. Anyway, I saw that he kept the Tetra Safe Start in a fridge next to the original Bio-Spira stuff (the one for SW that everyone seems to love). I also noticed that on the Tetra Safe Start that it stated it contained "patented Bio-Spira bacteria." So I said, what the heck, I'll give it a shot! I added the bottle to my tank, waited a week, and sure enough... 0 ammonia, nitrite 0ppm, and nitrate 5.0ppm! Now that my tank is established, I have crystal clear water (of course after a good old PWC). IMO, Tetra Safe Start works! Don't trust the other stuff such as API Stress Zyme (not sure about Nutrafin Cycle).

One thing important to note, if I were do to this all over again, I would do the fishless cycling method because it's simply faster (from what I read). Thankfully all of my fish are alive and doing well post-cycle.
 
Back
Top Bottom