Tellurye
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Ammonia & Nitrite Spike in Established Aquarium
Hi all,
I'm a bit confused as to what's happening to my 10 gallon tank. Let me preface this by saying I have 6 tanks, have been fish keeping for 6 years and everything with my other tanks are peachy.
It's my 10 gallon I use for breeding guppies that I'm having a problem with. It's been cycled for 3 months, with no problems. Steady 0-0-5 ammonia-nitrite-nitrate readings. The amount of fish in there changes every couple of weeks - not dramatically though. It's where I keep my female guppies, and juveniles until they are big enough to sex them. The really small fry have their own tank, then get reintroduced to this 10 gallon until sexed, then the males go into a 20gal, females stay.
Anyways long way to say I have about 15 guppies in this tank, ~7-8 being adult, the rest juveniles. My girls gave birth to 15 fry yesterday, I moved them. But, I've been struggling in the past week with my ammonia creeping up to .25. I've been doing 25% water changes with Prime everyday or every other day this week. But, for the first time ever in this tank, today I got readings of .25 ammonia AND .25 nitrite, 0 nitrate. When, as I said, it's been a stable 0-0-5 for 3 months. I used established media to instant cycle this tank, so I've never even seen nitrite before.
I did, however, disturb the gravel yesterday, much, much more than I usually do. A bunch of debris and poop was released into the water column. I was tracking down fry lol. Would this cause a spike like that? Also I noticed, ever since I added a nerite snail last week, that's when my ammonia started to creep up. But that may be coincidental. I figured I have enough surface area in my filter (AquaClear 20 - no carbon, just a sponge and filled with Fluval Biomax and a Fluval prefilter sponge) that any ammonia could be dealt with easily. Hell, I have an Oscar tank with a 20" pleco and I never get spikes in that cesspool when I vacuum it! Ha. Any suggestions on what could cause my cycle to basically crash and reset? I'm at a loss. But I don't want to hurt my guppy baby mommas! None of my other tanks have ever had a total crash before... or a mini cycle. Would this just be considered a mini cycle considering the ammonia/nitrite are only .25ppm? I did a 50% WC today with a triple dose of Prime, just to be safe. Says on the bottle up to 5x is safe in the case of a nitrite emergency.
I'm at a loss. Any advice/suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Tellurye
*Edit: No fish are acting stressed during all this, and my pH is 8.3. I have really, really hard water lol.
Sent from my SM-G935V using Aquarium Advice mobile app
Hi all,
I'm a bit confused as to what's happening to my 10 gallon tank. Let me preface this by saying I have 6 tanks, have been fish keeping for 6 years and everything with my other tanks are peachy.
It's my 10 gallon I use for breeding guppies that I'm having a problem with. It's been cycled for 3 months, with no problems. Steady 0-0-5 ammonia-nitrite-nitrate readings. The amount of fish in there changes every couple of weeks - not dramatically though. It's where I keep my female guppies, and juveniles until they are big enough to sex them. The really small fry have their own tank, then get reintroduced to this 10 gallon until sexed, then the males go into a 20gal, females stay.
Anyways long way to say I have about 15 guppies in this tank, ~7-8 being adult, the rest juveniles. My girls gave birth to 15 fry yesterday, I moved them. But, I've been struggling in the past week with my ammonia creeping up to .25. I've been doing 25% water changes with Prime everyday or every other day this week. But, for the first time ever in this tank, today I got readings of .25 ammonia AND .25 nitrite, 0 nitrate. When, as I said, it's been a stable 0-0-5 for 3 months. I used established media to instant cycle this tank, so I've never even seen nitrite before.
I did, however, disturb the gravel yesterday, much, much more than I usually do. A bunch of debris and poop was released into the water column. I was tracking down fry lol. Would this cause a spike like that? Also I noticed, ever since I added a nerite snail last week, that's when my ammonia started to creep up. But that may be coincidental. I figured I have enough surface area in my filter (AquaClear 20 - no carbon, just a sponge and filled with Fluval Biomax and a Fluval prefilter sponge) that any ammonia could be dealt with easily. Hell, I have an Oscar tank with a 20" pleco and I never get spikes in that cesspool when I vacuum it! Ha. Any suggestions on what could cause my cycle to basically crash and reset? I'm at a loss. But I don't want to hurt my guppy baby mommas! None of my other tanks have ever had a total crash before... or a mini cycle. Would this just be considered a mini cycle considering the ammonia/nitrite are only .25ppm? I did a 50% WC today with a triple dose of Prime, just to be safe. Says on the bottle up to 5x is safe in the case of a nitrite emergency.
I'm at a loss. Any advice/suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Tellurye
*Edit: No fish are acting stressed during all this, and my pH is 8.3. I have really, really hard water lol.
Sent from my SM-G935V using Aquarium Advice mobile app
