Overfeeding??=too much poop??=rise in ammonia??

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turbovr6

Aquarium Advice Regular
Joined
Jan 15, 2006
Messages
73
Location
NJ
I think I may be making a noob mistake even though I am trying not to.
I just added 4 gouramis and a kissing fish to my newly cycled 150gal. I've been feeding them a "pinch" of flake food 3 times a day.I have had the fish 1 week. There is never any food left. they devour it. What I do see is ALOT of poop at the bottom and my ammonia went from 0ppm to about .5ppm. I used my python twice to clean the bottom.
So am I doing something wrong? Should I be worried? I added some "ammo lock" with each cleaning/water change. I also tested my tap water and it came up 0ppm for ammonia.

Thanks in advance!!! :)
 
nope you should be fine, the thing about ammonia lockers is this, it deionizes the bad ammonia instantly and locks it up in a chemical bond type thing, the only thing is you'll still show readings on your test kit for a few days until its able to be filtered out and dissolved. This worried me when I had a fish I took care of that had ammonia poising and was burned alive pretty much, the LFS ( who actually has a marine biologist on hand for all there saltwater fish ) told me about how it would take a few days. Just keep doing weekly water changes and vaccum the gravel real good and you'll be ok, but monitor your levels to make sure they drop.
 
How exactly did you cycle this 150g tank and for how long??

Because, 5 gourami in 150g should not be a big new bioload...if the tank was properly cycled, those 5 fish, and any extra food should NOT register as ammonia, period.

My concern is the tank is NOT cycled, and 150g is no fun to do daily 50% water changes on for a safe/humane fishy cycle.
 
Although I'm a newbie myself, I agree with malkore - 5 little gouramis in a 150 gal tank should not be giving you ammonia troubles after a week. Something else, I think, is going on here.
Also, you may want to cut back on your feeding. 3x/day is too much from what I've learned on this site. I get lectured sometimes for feeding my babies TWICE a day. LOL Many on this board subscribe to once a day- and sometimes less.

Hopefully more "vets" will chime in......
 
HMM I did the 6 week cycle with 4 raw shrimp. I saw all the appropriate ammonia,nitrate,nitrite spikes/levels. Before I added the fish the tank was 0ppm ammonia,0ppm nitrite,4ppm nitrate.
Now the ammonia looks like it is about .5-1ppm, the other readings are the same.
I'm not sure what went wrong, I guess I should do daily water changes??????

Thanks
 
If the ammonia is getting close to one you do need to change the water. How long did you wait to get fish after you took the shrimp out and did the water change? Did you tough the filter at all?
 
I did the water change and shrimp removal about 3-4 days before I got the fish. I'm guessing you mean "touch the filter", which I did not.
 
Yes I meant touch sorry. If you went 4 days without a source of ammonia the bacteria could have very well started to die off. You may be cycling again. I am sorry. I also I hope I am wrong and all your hard work didn't go to waste, but I beleive 48 hours is the limit for how long those bacteria will live without a food source.
 
so should I be doing daily water changes to get rid of the ammonia and help the fish, or should I just let the tank try and re-cycle?? I don't want to see the fish suffer. They do look just as active as when i got them
 
OK. Thanks so much to everyone for helping
Hopefully all will go well. I would hate to see something bad happen to my fish. I took a pic during the water change :)

fish%20012sm.jpg
 
Thank You. I'm getting paranoid now that my fish are going to get sick or worse :( Hopefully the water changes will help!
 
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