should i do a partial water change?

[BHBowhunter]

my nitrate levels are at 0 but my amonia is like at 4.0

one 9 onch fish in a 55 gallon tank, had him for about a month, i can see some left over flake food on the gravel. however the water is still very clear.

he is normally really aggressve but he seems lathergic today. please help me!

if i do a chage i only vacum 1/2 of the tank right?

my nitrate levels are at 0 but my amonia is like at 4.0

50% change ASAP, get up all the debris you can.

if i do a chage i only vacum 1/2 of the tank right?

Get the most fish waste you can! dont sweat the 1/2 tank rule right now, gotta knock that ammonia back.

[stresco]

How long have you had the tank? Have you allowed it to complete it's cycle before adding the fish? When you say the your amonia is 4.0 do you mean 40ppm? What are your other water levels at (nitrite, PH, etc)? If your tank hasnt finished its cycle yet, you should not have any fish in there. You should remove him and wait for the tank to finish its nitrogen cycle. If it has finished already, remove the uneaten food from the tank and try a 20% water change, you don't want to do too much too soon, it will only stress out the fish (believe me, i know). Good luck.

[BHBowhunter]

yes the tank cycled.

I went ahead and did the 20 % change, and vacumed the gravel, I also added stress coat and stress zyme.

when i was done there was still all kinds of waste and food floating around.
I grabed what i could with a net. I will be testing my levels later tonight.

one more ?

I have a sponge on my power head, i took it off and cleaned it out, should i put it back on? considering it may be blocking some of the food and waste from getting to my filter.?

the reason i as is when i had it off that kind of stuff was being sucked up the tube, now it collects on the sponge. The LFS said it aided in clarity?
any ideas?

[stresco]

Test your water tonight and be ready to do another 20% tomorrow. If you are gonna keep that sponge on the power head, you should clean it daily, rinse it with fresh water and put it back. How often are you feeding your fish? You shouldn't be feeding you fish more than every other day to keep from over feeding and polluting your tank.

[TankGirl]

If you are registering ammonia levels the tank is not cycled. Perhaps it was previously cycled and something happened to cause another cycle. For whatever reason, you are back to square one and if you keep the fish in there you need to keep the ammonia down with water changes and follow a fishy cycling procedure until you are showing no ammonia, no nitrite and trace nitrate. It may be that overfeeding caused a spike in ammonia from decomposing food and waste, so monitor how much you feed and how much is consumed, and keep up with water changes. A prefilter on your intake is good but you have to remove it and rinse it out rather frequently, like stresco said, or it will accumulate too much debris, which will rot and create ammonia.

Good luck and keep us posted-

[BHBowhunter]

well i tested the water this morining and the amonia is still a little high. my plan is to remove the power head sponge, do a 20 % water change but im not going to vacum the other side of the gravel.

I have been feeding my warmouth bass flakes in the morning and 1 night crawler at night, since he makes a mess with the flakes im going down to just one night crawler a day, that should help with the rotting food issue on the bottom of the tank.

[d9hp]

I think the idea to cut back on the food is good, but be prepared to cut back to every other day.

If you are registering ammonia levels the tank is not cycled.

This is not true. Just because there is ammonia does not mean the tank is not cycled, it just means there is waste in the water.

[BHBowhunter]

being that he is a war mouth bass i think he needs to eat every day, he is very agressive in my tank and in nature they are hoggs and often gorge themselves, i do not want to starve him?

[TankGirl]

Just because there is ammonia does not mean the tank is not cycled, it just means there is waste in the water.

This is called a "mini" cycle and you handle it the same way as when cycling a tank. You lack the bacteria that consumes ammonia, so you do partial water changes to control ammonia levels until you grow the proper ammonia consuming bacteria, then wait until you grow the proper nitrite consuming bacteria, leaving you with nitrates, and a cycled tank. If you control the amount of ammonia present in the tank it will eventually cycle. It is not the same as a brand new, "uncycled" tank, but you have to "cycle" it nonetheless to remove ammonia and nitrite. No other way to get rid of it, besides complete water changes daily!