Ammonia & Nitrate help

[Sgc1107]

For the last week I've had a slight ammonia (between 0 - .25) and nitrate (5.0) spike. Nitrites seem to be remaining at 0. What is going on? I'm still new at this and learning more & more every day. My tank info should be below in the signature section, if not I can post it. Ive also been having a green algae on the glass, not bad but enough to be annoying. at first thought i was over feeding but that hasn't changed anything so far. Everything seems to be looking good but I'd like to know why the spike. And what I can do.

 

[NicoleIsStoked]

Are you using test strips or a liquid kit? Quite often the strips give an inaccurate reading of a tiny bit of ammonia.

 

[Sgc1107]

Are you using test strips or a liquid kit? Quite often the strips give an inaccurate reading of a tiny bit of ammonia.

Nope API liquid, and they both started at those levels on the same day the 18th. And I've done two water changes in between those 10 days. One was a 10gl change (thinking a 10gl change may help the spikes, it did not)) the other my normal weekly 5gl change.

 

[obscurereef]

So you cycled your tank? Perhaps you didn't raise the ammonia high enough and it wasn't strong enough of a cycle for the bacteria built up to support livestock or any kind of waste really.

 

[Sgc1107]

So you cycled your tank? Perhaps you didn't raise the ammonia high enough and it wasn't strong enough of a cycle for the bacteria built up to support livestock or any kind of waste really.

This tank is 10/11mo old and has been cycled. I bought it and moved it 2mo ago, water and all. It had several fish before it was moved. I added 1 chromis, star, and twin spot goby (who died, yes i took him out and that was a month ago, and it made no changes to parameters) little over 1mo ago and even after adding them no changes in parameters at all. Until last week? Hmmm

I am working on cycling my 10gl QT right now.

 

[Sgc1107]

So you cycled your tank? Perhaps you didn't raise the ammonia high enough and it wasn't strong enough of a cycle for the bacteria built up to support livestock or any kind of waste really.

Silly me I just realized I was talking with you about my 10gl QT the other day! No this is my DT I'm talking about not the QT.

BTW my QT is at:
Ammonia 2.0
Nitrite .50
Nitrate 0 still

Well on its way, hoping to see it keep moving in the right direction! I ended up using squid

 

[obscurereef]

Haha yeah I thought something sounded familiar, ahh hope I don't get them mixed up. Great that cycling your QT is moving along. Seems weird that you're having ammonia spikes if it's so established. Perhaps you have a bad water source like tap and the added effects contributed to the algae? Don't know about the ammonia though since you don't have a huge stock...infrequent water changes? Faulty test kit?

 

[Sgc1107]

Haha yeah I thought something sounded familiar, ahh hope I don't get them mixed up. Great that cycling your QT is moving along. Seems weird that you're having ammonia spikes if it's so established. Perhaps you have a bad water source like tap and the added effects contributed to the algae? Don't know about the ammonia though since you don't have a huge stock...infrequent water changes? Faulty test kit?

Well for water I've been using distilled (next buy is RO/DI) for now and now that I think of it a few weeks ago we found a RO water dispenser and more than 1/2 the price thought we'd give it a try, upwind further research it wasn't RO/DI only RO and switched back to the distilled. Could this be my problem even though its been two weeks since I've switched back?

I do water changes 5gl weekly and last week I actually did 10gl, and distilled was used for that. And it was after I switched back. So total of 15gl in water was changed since I switched the water back. And if I recall we did two 5gl changed with the RO water. Is it Necessary to use RO/DI or could just RO be fine? Could this be my problem?