High Ammonia (conflicting advice about ongoing daily water changes) Help?

I'm with Jim and Slappy. Keep up the changes to avoid permanent damage or painful deaths for the fish.

Forget the ammonia-sequestering media, water changes are better.

Cycle does contain nitrification bacteria (if fresh enough), just not ones which can and do establish in FW tanks, so to me it is snake oil. It is also the heaviest bioload all by itself of anything I have tested from LFS.

BioSpira does contain FW nitrification bacteria if it is available in your area.

Someday, in the best of all possible worlds, LFS folks will actually know and understand something about the physics, chemistry, physiology, microecology, etc. of fish tanks and their inhabitants. We are unfortunately a long way from that utopia. Much "common knowledge" on fish tanks does not hold water, but propagates mythology. What they do is frequently not actively harmful, just not helpful or best practice. Sometimes the myths are actively harmful and do enrich the LFS.
 
More reading:
http://www.thekrib.com/Chemistry/ammonia-toxicity.html

Quoted from another source: "Ammonia toxicity is significantly influenced by temperature and pH. The lower the temperature and pH the more ammonia can be tolerated.
Lethal ammonia concentrations at a pH of 6.5 are 0.73 ppm, while at pH 8.5 only 0.17 ppm are considered lethal to inhabitants.

A fish tank kept at 68 degrees F can tolerate more than twice the amount of ammonia as a tank kept at 86 degrees F."

Your level of ammonia is definitely toxic to most fish.
 
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reading labels

I suspect that most of the misinformation that we get from store employees comes from the time they spend reading labels on their products.
 
Some test kits can also not distinguish bewteen ammonia and ammonium. I can't remember which kits do allow for the difference.

Also does your water contain chloramines? If so then each water change will contain some ammonia as the dechlorinator spearates the chlorine and ammonia and only makes the chlorine harmless.
 
Thanks everyone,
oh and tkos no chloramine so that's not the problem.
The ammonia levels are high but stable and not fatal so I'll be patient and wait for the tank to cycle doing frequent water changes to provide some relief for our seemingly inactive neons. I know now that neons are quite sensitive to ammonia so I just hope they can pull through.

The neons behaviour is unusual as they hover near the bottom of the tank and seem to avoid moving with the exception of feeding time. Unfortunately, JSchmidt, I have to agree with you that they must be reacting to the ammonia. If they do however survive the NH3 spike can I expect them to tolerate the Nitrite rise any better or will it be even harder on them?? And if they do survive until the cycle is complete can I expect them to resume the more natural behaviour they exhibited in the LFS??

Keep in mind that:
NH3 - 0.17 ppm at pH 8.5 is lethal to "most" fish.

My ammonia levels are less than half of that with a slightly lower pH:
NH3 - 0.0753 ppm at pH 8.

Who Thinks the little guys will be alright?
Who thinks the are destined for the big aquarium in the sky?
 
As long as you keep the water changes up (pretty much daily I guess) then hopefully they will make it. They may also be adjusting to the rather high pH.
 
I'd be worried about them. Half the lethal dose, even at a bit lower pH, is still pretty hard on sensitive fish. The nitrite spike is harder on them, IME, in part because they've already been weakened from the ammonia burns. You can help prevent the nitrite being taken up by adding a bit of salt to the water... I forget the exact dosage... I think a teaspoon per five gallons is plenty.

Water changes are the best way to protect them, though.

Good luck,
Jim
 
Salt doesn't actually reduce the nitrite level of the water. What it does is reduce the build-up of methaemoglobin in the fishes blood and reduce the toxicity of nitrite accumilation.

Nitrite enters the fish's blood stream via the gills and oxidizes the iron in the haemoglobin..this produces methaemoglobin which prevents the blood from carrying oxygen. This turns the blood brown and causes suffocation and death.

It is actually the chloride in salt that works to relieve nitrite poisoning, and calcium chloride will work just as well as sodium chloride, if not better. Nitrite is much more toxic in low pH/soft water..probably due to the lack of chlorides.
 
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