I think we talked about this before, and I agree with everyone who says slow down the water changes.
I think from your testing of Tapwater and Tapwater + Prime shows us you have Choloramine. That means you have ammonia in your tap water.
You say your water can mearsure .5 PPM Ammonia. If your tank reads LESS then .5 PPM Ammonia, you are increasing the Ammonia by doing a water change. If your tank reads .4 PPM ammonia, you do a 50% PWC, you end up with .45 PPM ammonia.
Stop the PWCs for a few days, and just test for Ammonia.
Now, especially for that 4.5 month old tank, we want to take a look at another possible problem- Is your Biological Filter working? If that Ammonia goes down, the answer is yes, and the bio filter just couldn't handle the sheer amount of ammonia those daily PWC's brought in. If it stays steady or raises, you have a problem with your bio filter, and we need to look at why.
My theory is that your Bio Filter is overloaded. You mentioned doing 25-80% DAILY water changes, and your NitrAtes are still up to 5-10PPM? They should be about 0, unless your Bio Filter is converting a LOT of Ammonia to Nitrate.
If you are really worried about ammonia, maybe stop the PWC's, add some Zeolite (Ammo-Carb stuff, but without the charcoal)- Your ammonia should drop fairly rapidly. When it closes in on zero, discontinue the zeolite and test for a bit- If I'm close to right, it'll stay low.
YMMV,
I think from your testing of Tapwater and Tapwater + Prime shows us you have Choloramine. That means you have ammonia in your tap water.
You say your water can mearsure .5 PPM Ammonia. If your tank reads LESS then .5 PPM Ammonia, you are increasing the Ammonia by doing a water change. If your tank reads .4 PPM ammonia, you do a 50% PWC, you end up with .45 PPM ammonia.
Stop the PWCs for a few days, and just test for Ammonia.
Now, especially for that 4.5 month old tank, we want to take a look at another possible problem- Is your Biological Filter working? If that Ammonia goes down, the answer is yes, and the bio filter just couldn't handle the sheer amount of ammonia those daily PWC's brought in. If it stays steady or raises, you have a problem with your bio filter, and we need to look at why.
My theory is that your Bio Filter is overloaded. You mentioned doing 25-80% DAILY water changes, and your NitrAtes are still up to 5-10PPM? They should be about 0, unless your Bio Filter is converting a LOT of Ammonia to Nitrate.
If you are really worried about ammonia, maybe stop the PWC's, add some Zeolite (Ammo-Carb stuff, but without the charcoal)- Your ammonia should drop fairly rapidly. When it closes in on zero, discontinue the zeolite and test for a bit- If I'm close to right, it'll stay low.
YMMV,
