Possibly sick Green terror

[Mitch_Wilson]

Ok for the past few days I've been noticing my girlfriends green terror swimming awkwardly, mostly with his tail up near vertical and occasionally resting on the tank bottom leaning against the edge of the tank or driftwood. A week or so ago I had noticed he had lost a few scales but had assumed it was due to him running into the decorations so I told my girlfriend she needed to remove some to give him more room to move. But H has another scale being lost today.

She did a 50% water change yesterday however it didn't seem to help, I'm planning on doing another here shortly (She was wors e than I thought about her water changes, was doing about one a month, got on her case about that but was wondering if there was anything else that I may be able to do to help him.

The only other fish in the tank is a common pleco who has not shown any signs of distress or illness to my knowledge

Tank size is 55 Gallons
Green Terror length is roughly 6" long maybe a hair shorter
I see no obvious external symptoms other than the shedding scales and maybe a slight bump on one side but its hard to tell

.75 - 1 Ammonia (Yikes I think I found the problem)
0 Nitrites
~45-50 Nitrates

Any ideas what may have caused the ammonia spike? It is an established tank ~3 months since we moved and another year prior to the move (same filter, substrate, and decorations all transported in water).

 

[Mitch_Wilson]

So I decided to do a quick test on my tap water, just to be sure and lo and behold, over 2 ppm of ammonia in the tap. Im on my way to get some prime so that I can at least finish this WC. Does anyone else have this issue? or have any suggestions as to what I should do in the future?

 

[dalto]

The ammonia in the tap water probably indicates your tap water is treated with chloramine. Although 2ppm is a lot.

Prime should break the ammonia out of the chloramine and allow the cycle to process it.