The Agony of Defeat!!! (Advice Requested)

[Deacon211]

Ah, the best laid plans....

After establishing my first 3 gal tank the hard way, I decided to set up a 16 gal bowfront and do it properly this time.

I started with a fishless cycle using food, but switched to pure ammonia around week two because I thought it would be cleaner for the fish in the long run. I also tried to use as much of my lava rock and and filter sponge mud fro my old aquarium as I could manage.

After four weeks, I could turn 4ppm of ammonia into 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, and quite a lot of nitrates in 24 hours.

I transplanted my two Guppies over and, after figuring out what to do with 13 more gallons of water in their world, they seemed to settle in nicely.

The only thing that concerned me was that the water tended to the high Ph side (about 8.2) which I understand is common for the local water (I largely used bottled spring or drinking water, but also used tap water with Prime mixed in).

Based on the LFS advice I used Perfect 7.0 to start making the main tank accommodating for the Celestial Pearl Danios that were in my old tank in quarantine, but stopped after two days due to the cloudiness of the water. Another LFS suggested I try a piece of driftwood as a more natural Ph regulator.

So, as of Tuesday, my tank was reading 0,0 with Nitrates manageable and coming down from the couple of 30% water changes I had done and with the Ph at about 7.3 from the driftwood. Sweet!

And then the feces hit the oscillating unit.

Thursday afternoon, I came home and saw the tank was a cloudy mess; far cloudier than the Perfect Ph had made it (which was slowly clearing anyway since I stopped using it). A quick check with my API kit revealed 2 ppm ammonia, 0 nitrites! After an emergency 30% water change, a treatment of Ammo Lock, and about another 12 hours, this morning it is even worse at 4 ppm ammonia with nitrite starting to rise as well.

My primary concern now is saving the guppies if possible. One is the lone survivor from my first tank and that big learning curve. As I said, I put an emergency treatment of Ammo Lock (which I have read just now might not have been a good idea) and changed out 30% of the water. I'll do another 50% tonight. But, is there anything else that I can do to spare the fish? Should I put them back into my established quarantine tank? It may be a little crowded. Should I continue to use Ammo Lock?

My second concern is determining where I am now in my tank cycle. Have I just restarted it? What can I do to get things back on track? What caused the spike in the first place?

I'll admit, I'm stumped. I thought things were going swimmingly (pardon the joke). But this spike has me wondering what I did wrong...and what I can do to save the day.

Thanks for any help!

Deacon

 

[librarygirl]

Hi and welcome! Wow, I've never quite seen anything like this after a fishless cycle. My first guess is messing with the PH affected the bacteria. Most fish can adapt to whatever your PH is as long as it's stable (there are some very sensitive fish like Discus that this isn't true for but for most commom tropical fish it is); fish don't like fluctuations. The bacteria don't either and if the PH drops too low or drops too fast it can affect the cycle.

SO exactly how many fish and what kind are in the 13? You mentioned guppies and CPDs (I have these too, lovely fish). Did you add anything (or remove anything) prior to the spikes? Fish? Messed with the filter? Etc? What filter are you using?

First, stop messing with the PH. The driftwood is fine if you want to leave it, don't add any more adjusters, etc. Make sure the PH doesn't fall much below 7 as it can start affecting the bacteria if it gets too low. Your straight tap water would be fine to use, FYI. A PH of 8.2 isn't insanely high and the driftwood would lower it some anyway.

Chemicals like Ammolock can often not be trusted and they often only detoxify to a certain point; I suspect your ammonia is higher than anything can safely detoxify; even Prime only detoxifies up to 1 ppm of ammonia.

Right now larger water changes are your only hope of saving the fish. With ammonia at 4, a 30% water change won't do much to lower the level of toxicity. I'd suggest a larger water change, 60%, wait a couple of hours, test ammonia, do another water change. Keep doing this until you can get ammonia down to <.5. Use the Prime. Then just keep testing daily and do water changes to keep ammonia under .5. Hopefully the tank will stabilize once the PH stabilizes. Thats' the only thing I can think of that could have affected the tank, all of the PH shifts. Maybe someone else will have a better idea. Is there any way anyone could have dumped a bunch of fish food or anything in the tank? (also maybe count your fish, make sure one isn't dead somewhere; a decaying fish could cause a sudden ammonia spike also).

 

[bud29]

I really don't know what could have restarted your cycle, but you are clearly back in to a cycle. If you can put the guppies in to a cycled tank, that would be best, even if it is slightly crowded.

Just for future reference, for freshwater, in almost all cases, pH does not matter at all. No pH altering tool is needed for your pH. If you want to keep discus, that may be another story, but for right now you are fine.

 

[Deacon211]

Thanks for the replies!

It's actually a 16 gal tank. It just that it's 13 gal more than my two guppies were living in for a year

No extra food fell in that I know of and I vacuum the gravel when I change the water so I should have gotten the worst of it, if it did.

As it stands, I only put my two guppies in there after the big tank had cycled. I can't imagine what is making all that ammonia...there's an inch and a half of fish in 16 gal of water!!!

I may try to do 60% a day through the weekend and then retransplant my guppies back to the quarantine tank if this proves to be more than a spike of some sort.

Doesn't it stink when you screw something up by trying to make it better?

 

[librarygirl]

Guppies are messy fish though, they could be giving out that much waste to cause a spike. Check your filters too, make sure there isn't any decaying food stuck in there that could be causing the spikes too. Let your test kit dictate how much water to replace. So if ammonia is at 4, a 60% water change will only reduce to about 1.5-2, which is better, but still too high, so another water change after that one would be a good idea. Let us know how things turn out.

 

[Deacon211]

Guppies are messy fish though...

I just thought they learned that from me!

OK, so 60% to start, wait a few hours and repeat until I get those numbers down. If I'm losing this battle, come Monday I'd still feel better for the fish if I took them out. But then I am back to the drawing board.

How close should I get my water temperature wise? The biggest issue I have with big water changes now is warming it to the 78 deg I'm keeping the rest of the tank.

I'll report back on how this goes.

Thanks again for the help LG and Bud.

 

[shellieca]

I just thought they learned that from me!

OK, so 60% to start, wait a few hours and repeat until I get those numbers down. If I'm losing this battle, come Monday I'd still feel better for the fish if I took them out. But then I am back to the drawing board.

How close should I get my water temperature wise? The biggest issue I have with big water changes now is warming it to the 78 deg I'm keeping the rest of the tank.

I'll report back on how this goes.

Thanks again for the help LG and Bud.

You should be able to temp match by feel from the tap. I run hot & cold water until it feels like the tank water does & its usually within a couple of degrees. I'm sure it was stated previously but I didn't read every post , but the only thing you should need to add to your water is Prime or a similar water conditioner. Good luck with it.

 

[jetajockey]

Nuking the ph also nuked the nitrifiers, the subsequent bacteria bloom points in that direction. It'll bounce back but I agree to just ride it out and treat it like a fish-in cycle.


Prime and ammolock detoxify based on free ammonia levels and dosage size, check the label for specifics.

This is a good example to see just how adaptive/sensitive a "cycle" can be, even a biofilter built like a freight train quickly adjusts to the current tank dynamic.

 

[Deacon211]

Update

OK, so here's the status update:

1. Friday afternoon, I checked the water again and found easily 4 ppm ammonia, and 0.25 to 0.5 Nitrites. Did 60% tap water change with Prime.

I also checked the filter cartridge. It was very muddy, which makes sense since the first week or two, I was putting two pinches of flakes in per day and nothing was eating it. Still, I was surprised by HOW muddy it had gotten. Cleaned cartridge in old fish water.

2. Checked three hours later, 2 ppm ammonia. A second 60% water change.

3. Checked an hour later, something less than 0.5 ppm ammonia. Left overnight.

4. This morning, 0.25 ppm ammonia, trace nitrites. 3 gal water change.


So, it seems like something is eating the ammonia overnight, which is a tiny relief. Will check the water again later today to see if it is settling down.

My remaining concern is the Ph, which has zoomed back to above 7.6 since I put so much tap water into the tank at once. I understand that the Ph doesn't make much of a difference now. But are these big Ph swings shocking the fish?

Thanks again for all the advice. I'm hoping this was a result of either a dirty filter or the Ph chems I put in and that the tank will stabilize now that I've stopped doing that.

Oh, and thanks for the temp advice. You really can hand feel it to within a degree or so. Naturally, it's easier too since I'm filling from the tap and not having to stick my finger in store bought water!

Deacon

 

[librarygirl]

My PH is similar to yours; out of the tap it's 8.4, once it degasses it goes down to about 7.2 which is what my tank's PH is. I do 50% water changes weekly (I've done larger ones by accident where I forgot that the tank was draining lol) and the PH shifts don't seem to affect the fish at all. I wouldn't worry too much about that; high levels of ammonia would affect them much more than water changes with a higher PH.

You also might want to look into some better food; fish flakes can be messy. New Life Spectrum or Hikari make pellets for community fish that are cleaner and often higher quality than most of the generic fish flake brands.

 

[Deacon211]

Thanks again LG!

Checked the tank again tonight. Less than 0.25 ppm ammonia, 0 nitrites. Another 30% water change. I'll see how it looks tomorrow, but I'm heartened that the ammonia and nitrites are dropping by themselves.

I'll try the pellets; will certainly be cleaner.

Deacon

 

[librarygirl]

Nice job! Glad that it's settling down for you.