High ammonia levels in cichlid tank (55g)

[Cerianthus]

At this point I need to do something so I will look into getting a python vacuum. Thanks for the help everyone.

Hope all goes well!

 

[AngelFishRock]

Hope all goes well!

Me too! Good luck and cerianthus had a good point about draining the water into a bucket so you can see how dirty it is. You can start off with a manual syphon (be prepared to to some weird up and down motions) and drain the water into a plastic dish pan or bucket. But in the long run I would invest in a python, it makes water changes and vacuuming soooo much easier.

 

[Roody]

Well I did it and I must say it was nasty. There was times it was literally sucking up pure black. I'm feeling like a real idiot at this moment. I should have known better even though this was the first tank I got started with. I screwed up royally you could say. Through the course of siphoning up all that junk I took down about 50% of the water which is more than I wanted, but the sheer volume of black water brought up from the bottom of the tank was substantial. By no means did I get rid of it all, but I removed a good amount.

I'm going to test the water tomorrow and see where I stand. As always thanks everyone for your continued help.

 

[Coler]

Hopefully everything is well. Cerianthus made a very good point about the possibility of anaerobic bacterial activity in the substrate (although your substrate looks porous enough to maybe prevent this - its more comment with finer grain substrate like sand).

Basically in a poorly maintained tank where the substrate is not regularly vacuumed you can get areas in the substrate which are not oxygenated leading to anaerobic bacterial activity. This tends to produce pockets of toxic sulphurous gas, released when the substrate is vacuumed and can harm fish.

Hopefully however you will be ok.

 

[Roody]

One thing is for sure I learned my lesson.

 

[Roody]

Got really good news. Haven't tested my other levels yet, but I just tested my ammonia and it's back to 0ppm. Thanks everyone for the help. It's greatly appreciated.

 

[Coler]

That's excellent - well done & keep it up.