75G Tank Showing High Amonia, and No Nitrite & 20 ppm of Nitrate after a week and 1/2

Tweedybird

Tweedybird

AC Members
Feb 14, 2008
47
0
0
tested my levels today after a week and a half of testing waters after setting up the tank and doing water changes daily. for the first 3 or 4 days my water was fine at 0 amonia 0 Nitrite and 20 Nitrate.
Then after that while still doing 25 to 50% water changes daily, my amonia started spiking, but my nitrite remained at 0.

Now this has been going on for about 4 days, and today I came home tested the water again and my amonia spiked to 1.0 ppm while my nitrite was still 0
I just did about a 70% water change and vaccumed the bottom as well.

Is this normal? or should I be worried?
 
gonna test the water again in the morning before work and I'll report the readings.
 
This is a brand new tank, yah? Totally normal. Just be vigilant. The move from 10 to 75 means you're cycling again. Keep up the water changes to keep your ammonia and nitrites nice and low while your tank cycles.
 
Last edited:
yeah I just woke up and checked it again and it went from 1.0 to between .25 and .50
I don't have time now to do another wc it will have to wait until tonight around 6pm
but I'm worried by then it will probably be back up to 1.0
 
As it probably will be...water changes are a fact of life with a fishy cycle.
 
Tweedybird said:
tested my levels today after a week and a half of testing waters after setting up the tank and doing water changes daily. for the first 3 or 4 days my water was fine at 0 amonia 0 Nitrite and 20 Nitrate.
Then after that while still doing 25 to 50% water changes daily, my amonia started spiking, but my nitrite remained at 0.

Now this has been going on for about 4 days, and today I came home tested the water again and my amonia spiked to 1.0 ppm while my nitrite was still 0
I just did about a 70% water change and vaccumed the bottom as well.

Is this normal? or should I be worried?
Click to expand...

Tweety, are you cycling with fish? If you are then it is not unusual for the first couple of days or so to get a 0 reading. That is due to the fact that the amount of ammonia being produced by the fish hasnt built up to enough of a quantity to be measured.

Despite the water changes the ammonia does gradually increase and you start to see ammonia when you test the water.

You will probably continue to see some ammonia for a while, until the bacteria needed to convert it to nitrite have built up in numbers. When that happens the Ammionia will start to go down, and the bacteria will convert it to Nitrite.

While large scale water changes are not ideal - they stress your fish - the ammonia in the water does them no good either. You will have to do daily water changes until the tank is cycled.

It is the reason why fishless cycling is better.
 
montysmum said:
While large scale water changes are not ideal - they stress your fish - the ammonia in the water does them no good either. You will have to do daily water changes until the tank is cycled.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't necessarily agree - my weekly change is probably over 60% in one go sometimes, if I havn't done a 25% - 30% midweek.
 
Large scale water changes with water that is substantially different then the tank water (such as a tank that hasn't gotten a water change in a few weeks) can certainly be stressful to the fish.

Ammonia isn't stressful, it's downright toxic, it burns the fish's gills into useless chunks of scar tissue. Thats bad.
They're far better off stressed by daily 75% water changes then they are getting poisoned by ammonia.

Keep the ammonia under .25ppm, do as many water changes as you have to in order to accomplish this.
Once nitrites show up, keep them under .25ppm as well.

Sometime between 2 more weeks and 4.5 more weeks your tank will finally be cycled, and you can start doing weekly maintenance changes instead of daily (or twice daily, or more) emergency changes.



Your tap water probably has 20ppm of nitrates in it.
 
Yeah doing Fishy Cycle.


montysmum said:
Tweety, are you cycling with fish? If you are then it is not unusual for the first couple of days or so to get a 0 reading. That is due to the fact that the amount of ammonia being produced by the fish hasnt built up to enough of a quantity to be measured.

Despite the water changes the ammonia does gradually increase and you start to see ammonia when you test the water.

You will probably continue to see some ammonia for a while, until the bacteria needed to convert it to nitrite have built up in numbers. When that happens the Ammionia will start to go down, and the bacteria will convert it to Nitrite.

While large scale water changes are not ideal - they stress your fish - the ammonia in the water does them no good either. You will have to do daily water changes until the tank is cycled.

It is the reason why fishless cycling is better.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom