dieing tiger barbs and non-retreating ammonia

Flying_Diamond

Flying_Diamond

RAWR
Dec 20, 2006
780
0
0
Michigan
my boyfriend discovered today a very lethargic, laying around, dieing looking tiger barb. since then the barb has died but now another is showing the same simptoms, just floating around. sometimes lieing on plants on his back, seemingly 'panting'. plenty of aeration. so we went out and bought an ammonia test kit, not that we thought it would be a problem since he does water changes religiously. anyway, we discovered ammonia in the tank (45gal, cycled) to be about 1.5ppm. we did a 15% water change, tested it, ammonia's still a little over 1ppm. now we just did a 22% water change, and ammonia is at 1ppm. he also did a 7% water change this morning when he was concerned about the first barb. i don't understand why the ammonia won't come down, and we're also worried that there could be an underlying disease among the barbs as well. any advice?
 
What is the stock?
Have you checked to make sure everyone is accounted for?
When was it cycled and how?
Filtration?
What is your maintenance routine like?
What type of ammonia test?

Keep doing the water changes and increase the amount.
 
stock is currently 1 red tailed shark, about 3.5in, 6.5 tiger barbs, smaller, and three bristlenose plecos all less than an inch long. everyone is accounted for, we set it up about a month* ago using media from one of my tanks, he does 7% water changes every 4 days, and it's an api liquid ammonia test.
 
oh, and filtration is a like 40-50gal rated tetra whisper hob.
 
Filtration is a little low as they are usually underrated as it is, but I wouldn't expect that to be the main problem.

Have you tested your tap for ammonia?

Your wc's are not really sufficient. I would increase those to 20-30% per week at least.
 
i did test the tap for ammonia as soon as i saw the first results. 0ppm in the tap. i always thought he was doing more water changes than that, but i didn't think it was that terrible when i found out.. i'll make sure to tell him to change more. we just took 50% of the water out and we're refilling now. i'll let you know how the test goes. if it goes bad, i hate to see his reaction... =/
 
well, we just tested it and it's around .25ppm now, so at least it's coming down. i guess we're doing 10 more gallons...
 
Did you test the tap water before or after adding dechlorinator? If your water has chloramine instead of chlorine it will not show till after the chlorine/ammonia bond is broken. I learned this from having to figure out why my ammonia did not go down as much as it should with water changes. After use of prime my tap water has a ammonia content of almost .5 which makes things a bit of a pain when having ammonia spikes. Water reads 0 ammonia before the use of prime.
 
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