Help

[Techboy]

Help my tank has an ammonia problem. Last Saturday I cleaned my fish tank replacing all water. The next day the ammonia levels went up to 6.0 ppm so I added ammo lock2. The levels went down to 0.5 ppm but the next day they where back up at 5.0 ppm so I changed 25% of my water and added more ammo lock2 the levels went down to 0 ppm. Then I wake up this morning and the water is very cloudy and my ammonia levels are back at 6.0 ppm.

I have a 10 gal tank with 2. 2 1/2'' bale sharks 1. 2 1/2Iridescent sharks
1. 3'' Plecostomus and 2. 1'' sunset. The sub strata is medium size rock, my filter is a penguin mine, I have a coral life light, and a high power air system, no living plants and no live rock

I put ammo chips in the bottom of tank

 

[Terry]

Hi Techboy
I don't know if in the U.S.A things are differant but i read a lot of things on here were 50%, 80%, 100% water changes take place. My question would be WHY!.
We must do things differantly in the UK but after setting up an aquarium and letting it mature for about six weeks and keeping an eye on the ammonia, nitrite, and then nitate then with a weekly 10% or a bi-weekly 20% water change you can control all your parameters. We would only go as far as a 50% water change if things drasticly go wrong. By doing a 100% water change you are taking out so much of the good benificial bacteria that you could now be suffering what we call in the UK, New Tank Syndrome. that is when the bacterial content of your aquarium has been lowered far enough for your aquarium to crash. Instead of using ammo lock 2, try putting in some Ammo Rocks or Ammo Chips. These will absorb the ammonia in the aquarium.

 

[Techboy]

you can see if it is fish wast if you put a black light over the tank. if the water glows it is wast

 

[silvi-p]

hello terry,
I'm also writing from a non-US perspective, but my view is quite opposite to yours .
Here in Germany (well.... informed fish keepers in germany ) water changes of about 25-50% are the norm. 10 or 20% are considered as pure waste of time, since the concentration of toxic stuff in the water will not really be reduced. There are people who let their aquarium run without any water changes, but that's more the very experienced and well-equipped (tests) folks. Ok, and beginners (sometimes), who are just too lazy - but mostly it goes wrong for them.

by changing water, you can NEVER take out as much bacteria as to cause an no2 crash (what you refer to as new tank syndrome), since those bacteria live on the surfaces of decoration and plants and in the filter. only a very very limited population floats freely in the water. if you have a rather understocked tank, you might not have any problems changing as little water, but unfortunately, for most people problems occur cause of overstocking AND neglecting water changes or doing too small changes.

hope I could help.
silvia

 

[silvi-p]

@techboy:
how long did it take to "clean"? what exactly did you do? maybe your bacteria in your filter died in the meantime, and by washing (?) all of the decoration and probably taking out all of the mud, the rest is lost, too.
so your symptoms would be close to the situation where the tank starts from scratch to build up bacteria population. if you put the fish back in directly after cleaning, it would appear logical that you immediately get a bacteria problem.

could you describe what you did? 10gal seems very small to me - isn't one gallon about 4 litres? your tank might be a bit unstable since it is so small anyways. how often did you do water changes? cause your stock seems a bit high, too.

hope we can help you.
silvia

 

[Terry]

Thankyou silvia for your reply and it is good to get the opinions of the way things are done in differant countrys.
I do agree with you on a lot of the area's you are covering. What i was basicaly saying was with an aquarium that is not over stocked and well matured a 10% water change every week would be ok, but that is only my opinion i would not say that it has to be done. I myself have been keeping fish for about twenty five years and when it come to testing aquarium water i have some difficaltise, basically i am colour blind so when it comes to testing water i would not know one colour from another. I am a manager in a aquarium shop and we carry out 25- 50% water changes weekly, but that is because of our stock levels. Over the years UK Aquarium Technology has progress a long way and i think that it is from Europe especially and the U.S.A which have some fantastic product also. I know that in Europe, mainly Germany, Denmark etc. you are well into Plants Co2 etc. This is really starting to become a popular thing in the UK now but only recently. In the Uk we tested for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, PH. it is only in the last few years that people have started to learn about KH, GH. And in my oppinion this was brought over to England when Sera Products were introduced. The biggest killer of fish in an aquarium is us, people try to put as many fish in there tanks as they can, we are sometimes to free with the food that they need and then we are overfeeding. I myself have a great deal of respect for the german aquarist, I my self use Sera product and Tetra and Esha. I might be wrong in what i say but that is what is good about this hobby, everybody has there own way of doing things and if it works then there is no way on this earth you will change them.

 

[tkos]

The main problem is that the tank is housing fish that produce too much waste for 10 gallons of water to deal with. How old is this tank? Has it even properly cycled yet? You will need to keep doing 50% water changes even when you have it cycled to keep those fish happy (though they won't be in such a small tank - pretty much all of your fish can get to be 15 inches in size).

Even a total water change will not kill off the bacteria in a tank unless everything dries out. The bacteria in the water is unimportant compared with the bacteria on the rocks and glass and filter. I suspect when you cleaned the tank you replaced the filter media didn't you. Well that would be the main cause of a spike. That would have removed all of the good bacteria. You should replace the media unless completely necessary. Instead just rinse it out in old tank water that you have removed each water change and replace it. I have been using my same filter media for 6 months with just a rinse everytime I change water and I get no ammonia problems.

Oh yeah and live rock is pretty much a term used for salt water tanks, though technically you do have live rock as there are filtrating bacteria living on your aquarium rocks, and probably some nematodes as well.