biospira cycle, 1 week .2 ammonia

[redbucket]

I cycled with biospira and added my entire load 7 days ago. ammonia and nitrite have been 0 until today, when I got a reeding of .2 -- if it continues to climb, when should i do a water change? If it goes back down to 0, well, when should I do a water change in that case?

Thanks!

[Gunnie]

You can do a water change when you need to. The bio spira is supposed to settle within a few days. That is wierd you are getting a spike now. Did you add more fish, or what if anything have you done in the last couple of days? Also, when you added the bio spira, did you add a full bio load of fish at that time?

[TKOS]

You should be doing weekly water changes of 20-30% to keep the fish healthy. The max you want to let any ammonia level get is 2ppm, btu there is no need to really let it get that high. I wouk personally be doing water changes if I ever saw any amountof ammonia in my tank. Perhaps you are overfeeding the fish and that is why there is ammonia appearing now, as the old food rots a bit.

[redbucket]

Did you add more fish, or what if anything have you done in the last couple of days? Also, when you added the bio spira, did you add a full bio load of fish at that time?

only thing that happened was one of my apple snails kicked the bucket -- i've seen my dwarf gourami nipping the other one, so i'm thinking they may have got it. perhaps that could have caused the spike -- i had been overfeeding the first few days, but have since realized that and am now feeding a small amount once a day.

i'll do a water change today, thanks for the advice