ammonia and cloudiness

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ZakTheRipper

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Jan 12, 2006
Messages
41
Location
California
I've been having some strange problems with my tank I can't remedy. I have a 20 gallon with a pleco and an oscar, and I recently added plants, driftwood (bogwood, actually), and a DIY CO2 setup. I did NOT boil the wood because it was too big to fit in any pot i had, but I haven't had a lot of yellow staining, so that's not a problem. I also recently changed my filter media from charcoal to sponges, and I still have the biowheel going until the sponges seed properly. However, I'm having horrible ammonia problems, like off the chart, and I've been putting ammo-lock in there to keep my fish safe (despite this, the oscar seems to have ich, which I am already medicating, and the pleco fin rot, ditto). I've also done several almost complete water changes (~85%), with gravel-vaccing the first time. Still, the ammonia levels are very high. I have barely been feeding them, only what they eat quickly, and yet the water has been cloudy ever since i put the plants in, even after the water changes. What is going on?? Why is my ammonia so high and the cloudiness not going away? Neither of these things were problems before I added all this stuff.
 
don't change more than 25 % of the water, thats causing it to re cycle itself which is causing the ammonia spikes, change around 25 % every 3 days until it goes down and don't overfeed your fish any, hope this helps
 
Sounds like a decaying animal at first read. You can change 100% of the water and not affect your cycle (the cycle is in the bio wheel, filter and gravel not the water column)

Any missing fish? dead snails? something that could decay? you said you didn't boil the driftwood.. is it possible there was something in it?, Rat urine from when it was stored at a wherehouse somewhere? (best to at least soak it in extremely hot water in a pail, I run straight hot water onto the wood until the pail is full, then let it cool, dump and repeat).

Also, how old is your test kit, and have you had someone verify your ammonia reading?
 
tropicfishman,

I'm sorry, but that advice is NOT accurate. You must ALWAYS treat the most immediate problem in any situation. In the case of an ammonia spike, you NEED to remove the ammonia asap. Forget about your cycle for the moment, you need to prevent the fish from dying. While some bacteria will be found in the water column (tank water), they secrete a very sticky substance and quickly attach to surfaces (tank walls, plants, substrate, and obviously the filter). Because of this, very little bacteria is present in the water itself. Had you been doing a fishless cycle, it would have been better to NOT change water, but you have fish and so need to have acceptable levels of ammonia and nitrIte (below 1ppm, I'd recommend below 0.5ppm).

The charcoal inserts you removed contained most of the bacteria, the biowheel while great at increasing your bioload slightly, does not harbor the majority. This is why in multi-insert filters it is always recommended to replace inserts over time, not all at once. So you are basically going through an almost total cycle (the bacteria on the wheel will reseed the inserts but it will happen slowly).

One thing I would recommend is to take your sponges and gently rub them against the biowheel. Do this on all sides of all of the sponges/inserts. What you are doing is seeding the beneficial bacteria all over the sponges. Because the biowheel is the LAST part of your filter, any bacteria that "leave" the wheel will go into the tank, and probably get stuck to something already in the tank. While these bacteria will help in the nitrogen cycle, they do not get the same amount of contact with ammonia and nitrIte that the filter elements will get (due to the high continuous flow of tank water). You need to get the bacteria growing in several spots at once throughout the sponges. Bacteria double very quickly (about every 12-24hours), but they can be inhibited by close contact to each other. You are spreading them out so they do not bump into each other and slow or stop growth.

I won't get into the fact that your Oscar and Pleco are 2 of the worst fish for your 20gallon...

HTH,

justin
 
I would also add that ammo lock can cause false readings and really won't help keep your fish safe. You are better off not using it and doing necessary water changes to keep the ammonia down. Just don't do heavy gravel vacs. At times if your ammonia gets quite high you may have to do several water changes to get it down. I agree with 7Enigma with regards to the sponges and the biowheels.
 
How can they claim ammo-lock turns ammonia into a form that makes it safe for fish if it doesn't really protect fish from ammonia? Wouldn't that be false advertising?

I don't use chems as a substitute for water changes. And after reading the package for the sponges, I see that I need to stagger their replacement. I didn't realize the biowheel contributed so little to the filtration process.

Several water changes have done little to reduce the ammonia levels, and my test kit is only 9 months old and used regularly, so I doubt it's giving me bad readings.

I did do a massive gravel vac before i added all the new stuff (plants, wood, etc). Should a major vaccing never be done? Instead, should I just do a small amount of vaccing each time I do a water change?
 
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