Ammonia spike!!

[deano320]

Soo yesterday i added some diy osmocote plus root tabs, and today i notice my fish acting abit strange so i done a test on my parameters! My ammonia and went through the roof to abour 1.0ppm and my nitrates are about 20/40!

Has this all came about due to the root tabs or what could be my problem here??

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[Delapool]

I'd suspect the ferts for sure. Usually I will dose with prime just in case when doing substrate ferts.

 

[deano320]

Im doing a 50% water change now and using stress coat! Will this cure my ammonia or because my ferts r in the gravel my ammonia is always going to rise now? -_-

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[Mebbid]

How deep is the substrate? What Type of substrate? How deep did you push the root tabs?

 

[Delapool]

Im doing a 50% water change now and using stress coat! Will this cure my ammonia or because my ferts r in the gravel my ammonia is always going to rise now? -_-

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The nitrifying bacteria and plants will eventually process it. I've never managed to spike ammonia like that but pwc's and the bacteria will eventually deal with it.

Also pretty sure stress coat doesn't detoxify ammonia. You need API ammo lock or something like seachem prime / safe.

 

[deano320]

Substrate is gravel and about 3/4 inches! I pushed the root tabs right to the bottum!



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[Mebbid]

3/4 of an inch? or 3 - 4 inches?

 

[Coursair]

Substrate is gravel and about 3/4 inches! I pushed the root tabs right to the bottom!
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That's the problem. Planted tanks should be 2-3" of substrate and if the gravel is too large a size the root tabs will just release bits up through the ground. If you can, try adding some sand or small gravel to build up your substrate a bit deeper.

WCs and Prime should help for now.



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[deano320]

Sorry i mean 3 - 4 inches of gravel, Not 3/4 of an inch!

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[Mebbid]

Sorry i mean 3 - 4 inches of gravel, Not 3/4 of an inch!

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I've been seeing a lot of these threads all of a sudden. With this being a relatively new problem I decided to test it out a little. I got a root tab chilling in a 5g bucket of water at the moment. I'll let you know about how much ammonia production you can expect tomorrow.

That being said, I highly doubt it's from the root tabs. One got exposed during some uprooting of plants in my old tank. I decided to leave it just to see what would happen and I had no measurable problems regarding it.

Did you disturb the gravel much?

 

[deano320]

Very good! Will be good to hear the outcome and ammonia reading in the 5g bucket!

No i didnt disturb gravel very much at all!

The only other thing i cant think of or have changed in my tank, I added a school of otos a few days ago but surely they couldnt have made my tank spike?

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[Mebbid]

Very good! Will be good to hear the outcome and ammonia reading in the 5g bucket!

No i didnt disturb gravel very much at all!

The only other thing i cant think of or have changed in my tank, I added a school of otos a few days ago but surely they couldnt have made my tank spike?

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I tested one of my root tabs out in a 5g bucket of water over a period of 36 hours to test the ammonia production.

One size 00 root tab produced 0.5ppm of ammonia and 0ppm of both nitrite and nitrate in approximately 4.5g of water.

This means that in 1 gallon of water with 1 root tab there should be:

0.11ppm of ammonia
which converts to approximately 0.4ppm of nitrates in 1 gallon of water.


Math gives us an approximate measurement per day and a half of production for each root tab that's completely exposed to the water column.
0.01ppm ammonia / 0.04ppm of nitrate in a 10g tank
0.002ppm ammonia / 0.007ppm nitrate in a 55g tank

 

[Mebbid]

Well, I am an idiot and hit the wrong button while doing the math and in my coffee fueled state I didn't realize it. So now I'm fixing it

2.25ppm of ammonia per gallon

0.225ppm of ammonia or 0.81ppm nitrate in a 10g tank
0.04ppm of ammonia or 0.114ppm nitrate in a 55g tank

Again, this is a size 00 completely unburied root tab over a 36 hour period.