Ammonia spike

[thedogzoo]

Well thank you everyone for your help with my previous post - I had problems with my computer c: and couldn't get back on until today - so thank you! Well....we have our ammonia spike.Gee..what fun it is.I know it's good that my tank is cycling, but, wow....everything was fine and then pow...ammonia up at 2.5., ph went from 7.0 up to 7.2. I did a 15% water change and the ammonia went down to about 1.0 and ph back to 7.0.That was yesterday.Today I tested again and same thing...ammonia up to 2.5, ph at 7.2 so I just finished another 15% water change.Added some stress coat and am being very careful with the feeding.But I am wondering how long this phase will last? How often is it safe to change the water...daily? multiple times daily? I keep reading about how I should NOT add any chemicals like Ammo-Lock or the tank will have to start cycling all over....but I don't want to hurt the fish! Any thoughts on what I should do? Jenni

 

[Stefanie]

I would suggest doing larger water changes to get the ammonia lower, maybe around 50% water changes... As long as you add dechlorinator and match the temperature well, I believe you can not really overdo waterchanges.
I don't think there is a set time for this phase, but my tanks took about 3 weeks to no longer show any ammonia. After about 2 weeks I saw the first nitrites that went high really fast and took a lot longer to go down to 0. Total time for my tanks to cycle was about 7 weeks.
I am pretty new to keeping fish myself, so hopefully someone more experienced will correct me if I am wrong...
Good luck with your fish!!!

 

[Holly9937]

Definately do larger/more frequent water changes. The ammonia can go up literally overnight and at the numbers you are getting the fish will not live long ... Like the other poster said, as long as your temp. is pretty close within a couple of degrees, you really can't change too much water, it just gets very tiring b/c the cycling process can take several weeks