Ammonia levels

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iuman1979

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Oct 17, 2004
Messages
10
Location
USA
I recently (10 days ago) cleaned out my whole tank completely. It's a 5 gallon tank, with 2 guppies and 2 danios. The water is now getting cloudy but the ammonia is nondetectable. The nitrites are also nonexistent. I feed them once a day, and I only used StressZyme once. Is this normal? I know my water test kit is fine, I've been using it for the past month with no troubles. It had been registering ammonia before I cleaned out the tank. Could someone please give me some feedback?
 
By completely cleaned out do you mean emptied 100%?
If you did not rinse the filter or gravel then chances are that there was still nitrifying bacteria alive amongst the filter media etc. This would mean the bacteria had a head start on the ammonia being produced by the fish and hence no ammonia readings now.
In future I would recommend you do just partial water changes on the tank. You will stress the fish less and have a lower chance of sending the tank into a mini cycle.

HTH
 
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