cant get ammonia down

[Dayna]

hi the ammonia is our tank is not going down we had our spike and nitrites and nitrates are 0. but ammonia is still high.

theres only Live Rock in the tank plus 4 hermit crabs and 3 turbo snails.(had 4 but one died.?)

we have the skimmer goin plus 2 powerheads plus our fluval 404. and doing lots of water changes...

how do i get it to drop?

 

[steve-s]

we had our spike and nitrites and nitrates are 0. but ammonia is still high.

Do you mean that the nitrites and nitrates have risen and now diminished or only the ammonia has spiked so far?

It can generally take about week (sometimes less) after the innitial spike in the ammonia for the readings to subside. It really depends on the amount of die off and/or what is being used to fuel the cycle.

If the tank has gone through the proper cycle start to finish, then I would suspect something has died, overfeeding or you have added additional LR.

Can you expand on it a bit?

Cheers
Steve

 

[Dayna]

hmmm okay..

yes the nitrites and nitrates have spiked now ammonia has spiked
its been 2.5 weeks and seems to be getting worse (water turns darker green rather than yellow in test tubes.
i'm not overfeeding cause theres no fish...
there might have been some die off off the live rock but i've blown it and sucked everything off so its fairly clean...

i've cleaned my fluval and replaced the filter pads in both powerheads as well.


1 know forsure 1 snail died but we removed him as soon as we found him he was dead for no longer then 9 hours. and since then did water changes.

no additional live rock has since been added. there is 50lbs of it.


i want it to go down!!!

 

[steve-s]

yes the nitrites and nitrates have spiked now ammonia has spiked
its been 2.5 weeks and seems to be getting worse

By the sounds of it, either the LR is still curing or the tank has not cycled properly yet. Either way, you will need to do large daily water changes to keep the ammonia in check. Even though there may be no obvious signs of die off on the rock does not mean there won't be something "unseen".

What is the ammonia reading and have you had the results confirmed by the LFS? Could be the test kit is not reading correctly.

Cheers
Steve

 

[jackdp]

i've cleaned my fluval and replaced the filter pads in both powerheads as well.

If your tank just cycled and then you cleaned and replaced a majority of the filter media, this could cause a mini cycle as the filter media provides surface area for bacteria to grow on. Provided you have about 2lbs/gal of LR, I would run the tank without mechanical filtration and only carbon...let the LR do the bio-filtration and the crabs and snails do the mechanical.

 

[Dayna]

the LFS is the ones doing the water testing.