Help: Newbie with .25 - .5 Ammonia Levels in Goldfish tank

[fancies]

Hi All,

I'm a newbie at keeping goldies. I have a 40 gallon tank with 3 fancies (a black moor, a blue oranda and an orange/white rhyukin). I've been running a HOB Penguin 200 filter since I inherited the black moor in January. He was the only fish in the tank until 3 weeks ago when I added the 2 others. All of my parameters were 0 before adding the new fish.
Initially everything was fine but about 10 days ago I noticed that the water was getting cloudy and my ammonia spiked to 2ppm. I use the API master test kit. Last week I got an Eheim Pro 4 350 canister filter thinking that a better filter would help. The water is beautifully clear but the ammonia is still registering between .25-.5. I've been doing daily 50% water changes (sometimes 2x/day) for the last week but I'm still getting .25-.5 ammonia. Nitrite and Nitrate are both 0. Ph is 7.5 . I use Prime and Stability with each water change. I started using Ammo-Lock a few days ago as well.
Overall, my fish seem to be ok. They swim around and explore the tank but occasionally the moor and rhyukin sit on the bottom of the tank.
Does anyone have any advise for me? Is this something that I need to wait out or is there something else I can do?
Thanks in advance.

 

[Delapool]

Hi, welcome - this is something that unfortunately is just waiting out for the bacteria populations to grow. You can try seeding the new filter from the old filter to help it along (I assume you are running both); and/or trying the bacteria in a bottle (sometimes helps, sometimes doesn't). Then prime and (sadly) lots of water changes (roughly temp matched, carefully added to not stress).

 

[Thereza]

Hi All,



I'm a newbie at keeping goldies. I have a 40 gallon tank with 3 fancies (a black moor, a blue oranda and an orange/white rhyukin). I've been running a HOB Penguin 200 filter since I inherited the black moor in January. He was the only fish in the tank until 3 weeks ago when I added the 2 others. All of my parameters were 0 before adding the new fish.

Initially everything was fine but about 10 days ago I noticed that the water was getting cloudy and my ammonia spiked to 2ppm. I use the API master test kit. Last week I got an Eheim Pro 4 350 canister filter thinking that a better filter would help. The water is beautifully clear but the ammonia is still registering between .25-.5. I've been doing daily 50% water changes (sometimes 2x/day) for the last week but I'm still getting .25-.5 ammonia. Nitrite and Nitrate are both 0. Ph is 7.5 . I use Prime and Stability with each water change. I started using Ammo-Lock a few days ago as well.

Overall, my fish seem to be ok. They swim around and explore the tank but occasionally the moor and rhyukin sit on the bottom of the tank.

Does anyone have any advise for me? Is this something that I need to wait out or is there something else I can do?

Thanks in advance.

Hi there, I'm also a Newbie and is still living with a Nitrate shocked tank! I have goldfish and unfortunately lost about 3 big fancy goldfish and 2 smaller ones [emoji30] the only thing that I heard, read and got info on is the water changes... It feels like it will never work, but you will see it getting better slowly but surely...

My Nitrates are no 10% of what it was at the hight of the spike...

Off to do a water change again...

Hang in there!