Ammonia will not go down

S

svns gunner

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Jan 4, 2008
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Our tank has been up and running since late December. We have been doing daily water changes (at least 25%, more like 50% once a week), using Prime during each change, using Stress Zyme weekly, vacuuming the gravel, etc. After all this, we still can't get the ammonia down below 1 on the API tests.

Ammonia did spike a few weeks ago, as did Nitrite then Nitrates, but those have dropped back to 0. It's just the ammonia that won't drop.

Any ideas?
 
have you tested the tap water?
 
Stop using the stress zyme. It does more damage then good and could be messing with your readings. The only chemical you need is the "prime" during water changes. Also consider doing a test on your tap water and see what you come up with.

Marinemom
 
tap water is treated with chlorimines, until your bacteria is established, you can't get ammonia down below 1ppm. Don't worry too much though, most of that 1 ppm reading is detoxified to NH4 because of the prime.

When ammonia starts reaching 1.25-1.50 is when you need to do more water changes.
 
Even the tap ammonia should disappear after 24-48 hrs if you are doing regularly spaced weekly water changes.
 
This is gunner's wife popping in to answer some of your questions.

We're doing DAILY water changes of 25% or more, not just weekly, all in effort to get the ammo level down, and the level never drops below 1.0.

After almost 2 months and a fishy cycle, shouldn't the bacterial in our tank be established? We had the ammo spike (it went up almost to 4), followed by the nitrite spike, followed by the nitrate spike, so it seems that we should have established bacteria.

All these daily water changes are going to cause a major spike in our water bills, so if we're wasting our money doing them I'd rather not keep it up.
 
Lilrhody
You should be able to back off and let the bacteria take care of things. I also have tap water at 1 ppm. After my tank had cycled, if I did large frequent water changes I could push the ammonia back up to almost 1 ppm. If I did lots of smaller changes of say 10%, I would get a small ammonia spike right away from the new water but after a few hours the ammonia would be gone because my bacteria would have handled it. Now I watch my nitrates and if they get up around 20, I do several small changes of about 10% to get it back down. When I mix in 1 ppm as 10% of the total water, my ammonia spike is almost too small to see at 0.1. Within a short time, a few hours, I can't detect any ammonia at all. 3 or 4 10% changes will help the nitrates as much as a single 25% change but it causes less ammonia problems for my fish.
 
Summarizing my Tester kit: it says that if you have an ammonia problem and you treat it with "Ammo Lock" or some other ammonia treatment, you may still have high readings, since the treatment only detoxifies the ammonia. A biological filter will then consume the non-toxic ammonia, converting it into Nitrite and then to Nitrate. If your filter has not totally consumed it, your ammonia levels may still read high because it detects the presence of the now NON-toxic ammonia.
Im no expert by any means, but this was what I ran across in my experience. My 3 fancy Golds are pretty good sized and especially ..let's say "poop-happy" and love to test my ammonia fears to the limits.
In fact, my Ryukin actually got Ammonia Burn (blackened/darkened areas on the body) until I changed water sources for my water changes: I gave up on my brutally hard tap water, & broke down and bought about 15-18 gallons of Gov. regulated "Drinking Water" @ 89cents a gallon. Everyone's situation is different, but to me it was worth it. I've done this 3 times and his skin is now Oxy-clean! Perhaps your water's the culprit?
 
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