1 ppm Ammonia!

[mrvincent]

Just watch this chart, this determine ammonia/ammonium toxicity depending on temp/PH. Just to be safe, pretend that your PH is .5 higher, as PH test kits are usually inaccurate.

This mean your ammonia levels are not toxic for fish, it is mostly more ammonium than ammonia.

As you can see, the lower the temperature is, and the lower the PH is, the lower the ammonia is toxic. If you turn off filter every night, it will have difficulty for transforming ammonia-->nitrates.

Is your power outage like this always ? I would recommand you plug only the filter on a small battery car with inverter, filter usually not consume over 10 watts. My Eheim 2213 need 8 watts. Depends on the filter brand/size.

 

[Soul-Man22]

Ok thanks! My filter does not turn off like this normally, we are still with out power and i have my tank hooked up to our generator and everything is working well except when we have to shut down for the night. I have a small power inverter that May power the filters. Should I try to run both of them or just one? I have an aqua flow 50 and an aqueon quiet flow 20.

 

[Rivercats]

Having tap water with a level of .5ppm ammonia isn't great but it's not too bad. Right now don't do any WC's until your power is back on. While the power is off just dose the tank with Prime every 24 hours.

Once power is back on you have a couple of choices. You can use RO water and do 1/2 tap water and 1/2 RO water to bring ammonia levels down to .25ppm during a WC. Once your out of your mini cycle your BB will be able to convert .25ppm or even .5ppm of ammonia quite quickly.

You can use spring water but you have to test to see if it has any ammonia, nitrite, or nitrates in it. Some people have found that some brands of spring water have the above in them.

RO water is usually pretty cheap. Many grocery stores have fill your own jug machines in their stores and generally a gallon is pretty cheap. Another thing many people do when they have ammonia in their tap water and don't want to buy spring or RO water is they do 2 smaller WC's weekly. This adds less ammonia at a time than one large WC does and allows the BB to break down the ammonia very quickly.

 

[mrvincent]

Run the two filters, it will be 20-30 watts total power, average car batteries contains 700watthours, so it should run both filters for 24 hours without a charge.

 

[Soul-Man22]

If I add some plants could it help?

 

[mrvincent]

It will help, but so not much that you won't see any difference on test kits.

Anyways, live plants are great addition to a tank if you have good lighting, don't invest in this if you only have 1xT8 bulb. You can grow anubias or java fern with this.

Here what my planted look like

(Sorry, I like to show it )

 

[Rivercats]

If I add some plants could it help?

There are some plants that can help a lot and do fine with your lighting. Two great floating plants that work well are water lettuce and frogbit. Water sprite can handle low light and will absorb a lot of ammonia and nitrates.

 

[mrvincent]

Water duckweed absorb a lot of nutrients and can be easyly removed from the tank, as they're floating.

The most powerfull plant I found into sucking nutrients is hygrophillia difformis, as they grow superfast and are heavy nutrients feeder.

 

[Soul-Man22]

I just got a dual t5 lamp for the tank, and I already have an Anubia, sword, and a cryptocoryne. I'll look in to getting some of those plants also I really love the look of the planted tanks!

 

[Rivercats]

The problem with duckweed is that it not only multiplies extremely fast so constant removal must be done or it will quickly overtake the water surface but also it is very messy and can quickly clog a filter especially HOB's that tend to push the duckweed under the water allowing it to be sucked into the filter.

 

[trickshot3102]

Prime can do the job temporarly... What's your PH, temperature and current ammonia level ?

I think the Prime will help the fish (temporarily) with stress.

 

[Soul-Man22]

I just did a water change in the tank, I couldn't go out to get spring water so I just used the tap, the tank was starting to get cloudy before the change but after it is much more cloudy. I think it may be a bacterial bloom but I'm not positive, I'll post a pic.