what tank is this in, how long has it been running etc. We need tank details to help. Small false positives are possible after using some water conditioners but thats not small.
Also I can't tell from the picture, but the ammonia alert looks like it still has the plastic on it. obviously it won't work if it still has the plastic on it
Ooops, okay plastic is off now. It wouldn't come off when I first took it out of the package and made the assumption it was supposed to stay. It is off now and reading .05ppm ammonia but the ammonia test from api still reads extremely high.
Details - First off, yes I'm one of those stupid newbies who basically walked into a store and bought everything and set it up and added fish within 24 hours. I have a friend who has had a 15 gallon fish tank for years. I basically listened to her advice and vague memories of my teen years when I had a fish tank. After I got the tank, I started doing my research and realized I had done everything wrong. My friend is also one of those people who doesn't do water changes, has never checked the ammonia, ph, nitrite or nitrate levels and doesn't even know what those are. She got a tank, stuffed 4 tetras, 1 common pleco, 1 pictus catfish and some fiddler crabs in there and they have against all odds survived.
Tank is a Marineland 55 gallon kit with an additional Aqueon 55/75 filter and added fluval ammonia removing filter added to each. I also added the old filter media from my friend's tank to the marineland filter on it's second day of running. The tank was set up on Dec 30 and fish added the 31st.
There are currently 8 zebra danios, 4 tiger barbs (started with 6, the other two died shortly after I started using prime/stability and the tank's temperature spiked to 82 degrees farenheit), 4 platys (started with 6, also died after I started using P&S), 3 black mollies, 1 common pleco (who I will be rehoming soon), 2 horned nerite snails (which I was able to visually confirm were still alive this afternoon), 2 emerald corys (started with 3, but the 3rd one died while in another tank), 1 pictus catfish and 1 neon tetra (started with 6, 1 died in another tank, 1 died in this tank, and the others have just disappeared. I'm assuming they died and/or were eaten), and there may or may not still be 2 fiddler crabs in there. I haven't seen them in days but I also haven't found bodies so I don't know if they are just hiding, escaped or died and their bodies haven't shown up yet.
Most of the fish were picked by my friend and I just paid for them. All but the snails and corys were bought at Walmart. The tetras and corys were originally in a different tank (10 gallon) but after they kept dying I moved them into the bigger tank and they (the corys) seem to be thriving better there. The mollies were in another 10 gallon by themselves but I moved them to the bigger tank so I could rehome a betta that was in a too small tank.
The substrate is gravel and there are a few live plants in there. Most though will have to be taken out eventually because they are not actual aquatic plants (all were bought from Petco, some were even housed in an aquarium). There is one long air stone and one bubbler going in the tank. When I started the tank, I used API stress coat and quick start. After I realized I had gone about this all wrong, I used the rec of someone on another board and started using Prime and Stability. Before I started using them, ammonia would spike but after a water change, the ammonia level would go down. After I started using them, I'm seeing no change in ammonia levels before and after water changes. The seachem site recommended getting the ammonia alert because it only detects the harmful ammonia unlike the api test.
So that was an extremely long ramble, basically I'm trying to prevent more fish deaths and looking to see if I'm not doing something right or missing a step or whatever or to see if there is something I can be doing to help the situation.
Thanks
Edited to add: Just did a water change. I left the hose siphoning out water and I just refilled as it got lower. I replaced about 40 gallons of water. I also used the gravel vacuum and added Prime to the water. Test results again came out: 0 - Nitrites, Ammonia looks about 1, and the Nitrates could be 0 but it looks slightly orangey to me just not enough to be 5 which is the next level after zero.