bananafish
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2020
- Messages
- 14
hey! new here and to aquarium keeping. sorry for the excessive info that will follow but i wanna get to the bottom of this! and would like to know if i should change anything i’ve been doing. i set up a 10 gallon planted tank 5 weeks ago. i used caribsea eco complete substrate, and have been using seachem prime, stability, and flourish as well as api liquid co2 per respective dosing guides. have a couple of api aquatic plant food tablets buried in the substrate. using tetra whisper 10i filter and an airstone. no critters other than a handful of lil snails that hitched a ride on the plants i purchased at my lfs. 25% water change every two weeks. haven’t changed/cleaned filter cart. i have been testing parameters using the api freshwater master kit, and for the first 3 weeks tested no ammonia, no nitrite and 20ppm nitrate. last week ammonia was off the charts, then two days ago dropped to 0 again. sometime last week i received the 50w heater i ordered and added that to the tank (had been kept at room temp 70°F prior, heater now keeping tank at 79°F). have been adding various plants and today added malaysian driftwood that i only rinsed prior to adding, per lfs recommendation. tested water tonight and ammonia is at 4ppm, nitrite .25ppm, nitrate 80ppm. a couple days ago i thought i would be in the clear to add fish! is it normal for ammonia to jump around like that with no fish or feeding? am i doing anything wrong?