can this be right?

T

tank3544

AC Members
Jul 10, 2005
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I've been having a really hard time getting my ammonia levels down. I'm currently on day 18 of cycling the tank and my ammonia levels are between 1 and 2. I've been doing 50% water changes and starving the fish. By everything I've read the ammonia should have been at zero no later than day 10.

I think I may have solved the problem today. I tested my tap water to see if it was the culprit and the ammonia levels in my tap water are around 1. Could this be the problem?

I've been using aquasafe to treat the tap water for chlorine and other stuff. It also says on the back of the bottle it treats "ammonia components".

If its really not treating the actual ammonia that means everytime I change the water I'm really not helping anything at all. I'm just putting in more ammonia everytime. If I've been reading correctly that means my cycle is going absolutely nowhere. Reintroducing the ammonia just makes it completely impossible to bring the nitrate levels down at all.

Is there a solution to this?

I have a bottle of Prime that removes ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, and some other stuff. But I don't really want that stuff removed so this thing will cycle already.

Help?
 
Give us your tank size, equipment, water parameters, temperature and fish. how often are you doing the water change. has your ammonia ever been higher?
 
oh, yeah - those timelines are estimates. I've had a tank take three weeks before the ammonia started to subside and another that came down in one week.
 
20 gallon tank
Penguin 200 with biowheel

5 - Tiger Barbs
2 - Green Barbs
3 - Albino Barbs
1 - Pleco
1 - Cory Cat

Ammonia - 2
Nitrites - .25
Nitrates - 7
PH - 6.7
Water temp - 77

water changes were every couple days because the ammonia was never over 3 .. i've been doing them every day now to try and get the ammonia to zero .. i'm on day 18 of cycling the tank
 
It looks like you are pretty heavily stocked to be so early in the cycle. Your pH is low enough that most of the ammonia is in the non toxic form. Good news! When you bind ammonia with water treatments, your test kits will still register ammonia. I experienced this with a tank I had used Ammo Lock in. The company says the ammonia is still available for the bio filter, but I couldn't get my readings down even with 50% water changes everyday, so I have my doubts about that. Since you have nitrites and nitrates, your cycle is definitely in progress. Try making your next few water changes with bottled drinking water (ammonia = zero) and see if the levels begin to drop. Keep an eye on the pH. you don't want it to go over 7 with high levels of ammonia in the tank.
 
You said that the tap water reads 1 ppm of ammonia,,,,,,,due to the fact that ammonia is very toxic to fish, i suggest that you get your water elsewhere.
 
impossible said:
You said that the tap water reads 1 ppm of ammonia,,,,,,,due to the fact that ammonia is very toxic to fish, i suggest that you get your water elsewhere.
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Lots of tap water reads ammonia. Mine does. That's chloramine. The de-chlorinator will bind it so that it's harmless. Unfortunately, as someone already pointed out, you will still get a reading on it.

Roan
 
dsbrasw said:
It looks like you are pretty heavily stocked to be so early in the cycle. Your pH is low enough that most of the ammonia is in the non toxic form. Good news! When you bind ammonia with water treatments, your test kits will still register ammonia. I experienced this with a tank I had used Ammo Lock in. The company says the ammonia is still available for the bio filter, but I couldn't get my readings down even with 50% water changes everyday, so I have my doubts about that. Since you have nitrites and nitrates, your cycle is definitely in progress. Try making your next few water changes with bottled drinking water (ammonia = zero) and see if the levels begin to drop. Keep an eye on the pH. you don't want it to go over 7 with high levels of ammonia in the tank.
Click to expand...
FWIW my tap water also tests as 1.0 ammonia and my tank water always reads .25 ammonia after a 50% waterchange. It goes away in about an hour and I get a 0. What I do is wait for an hour after a waterchange, then test the water. That might help. Maybe try that and see?

Roan
 
i'll give that a try tomorrow .. i'm going to be picking up a dozen gallon jugs of spring water tomorrow to refill after my water change instead .. hopefully i'll have better results

i'll test an hour after the water change and report back .. thanks!
 
dsbrasw said:
Your pH is low enough that most of the ammonia is in the non toxic form.
Click to expand...

are you saying that ammonia is only toxic to fish at certain pH ranges? while its true that it is present as both ammonia and ammonium at pH 6.7, the same is true at pH 7.3. just because the pH is below neutral does not mean that ammonium will completely replace ammonia and vice versa.

if i misunderstood, please let me know.
 
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