bpeitzke
Aquarium Advice Activist
For over two weeks now we've been having drastic ammonia spiking in our 40-gal FO CC tank. Our angels, damsels & clown all died, and only the puffer is surviving. My wife thinks that my having rinsed the filter sponges in tap water might be what killed the fish, but even though I now realize that's a no-no, I can't believe the minuscule amount of tap water did it. I also rinsed the charcoal in tap water, but never the bio-habitat briquets, just kept that in a dish of tank water until time to reassemble filter.
We've been changing 5 - 15 gallons every day, each bucket carefully prepped for salinity, pH and NH3/NO2-free. But it keeps spiking ( The protein skimmer is producing more brown froth than before, and needs its trap cleaned 2x/day, and there are more bubbles on water surface than seems normal.
We have a Fluval 204 and two PH's; plenty of aeration & water movement. Historically we had too many fish and overfed for many months (ignoring your good advice, but let's not go there). The puffer didn't eat for ~ 2 weeks, but has resumed feeding for 5 consecutive days - but now we only give him 1/4 cube of frozen sponge/etc mix, which he inhales in seconds. He looks healthy, but seems down when the NH3 is high. It goes to the max of the color chart every morning, and we dump in Amquel to neutralize it, then change water evening.
Is this all just from built-up waste material? Have our ammonia-consuming bacteria died? I think at this point we need to remove puffer to a holding tank, and do a major water change, vacuuming all the CC, and wait/test/water-vacuum/change until it stabilizes. Would this do it, or do we need to totally empty tank, rinse CC, and start fresh & cycle tank?
Desperate for advice.
Bob Peitzke
We've been changing 5 - 15 gallons every day, each bucket carefully prepped for salinity, pH and NH3/NO2-free. But it keeps spiking ( The protein skimmer is producing more brown froth than before, and needs its trap cleaned 2x/day, and there are more bubbles on water surface than seems normal.
We have a Fluval 204 and two PH's; plenty of aeration & water movement. Historically we had too many fish and overfed for many months (ignoring your good advice, but let's not go there). The puffer didn't eat for ~ 2 weeks, but has resumed feeding for 5 consecutive days - but now we only give him 1/4 cube of frozen sponge/etc mix, which he inhales in seconds. He looks healthy, but seems down when the NH3 is high. It goes to the max of the color chart every morning, and we dump in Amquel to neutralize it, then change water evening.
Is this all just from built-up waste material? Have our ammonia-consuming bacteria died? I think at this point we need to remove puffer to a holding tank, and do a major water change, vacuuming all the CC, and wait/test/water-vacuum/change until it stabilizes. Would this do it, or do we need to totally empty tank, rinse CC, and start fresh & cycle tank?
Desperate for advice.
Bob Peitzke