Major Ammonia Spike

T

TetraFreak

Church of the Freshwater Aquarium!
Dec 14, 2005
537
19
18
Sweet Home "Northern" Alabama
My wife's 55 gal African Cichlid tank has been having massive ammonia spikes lately.

Tank inhabitants are Haps, Peacocks, a couple cats.

Tank has been up and stable for quite a while and now, even after 50%water change the ammonia levels keep jumping right back to a dark green. I have Ammo Lock on the way

Any ideas? only major change was fluorite to fluorite sand change followed by quick start to re-seed.


Thanks in Advance!

-TF
 
There is very little you can do except water changes and a good ammonia detoxifier.

Do not feed the fish, do not add ferts if you have live plants. Trace elements/micro nutrients are OK if you must.

Also, jik, test your tap water for ammonia as well.

I would not use Quick Start. I would use Dr. Tim's One and Only or Tetra Safestart if you must. Something like Amqual or Prime has ammonia detoxifiers. I prefer the Amquel to the Amquel + when I can get it. I also would suggest this:
https://www.seachem.com/amguard.php
 
TetraFreak said:
..........Any ideas? only major change was fluorite to fluorite sand change followed by quick start to re-seed...
Click to expand...

That is indeed major if you broke the tank down and did a full substrate change. What type of filtration do you have and did you leave it intact during the substrate swap?

Your filters (if done right) will house the bulk of the beneficial bacteria you need to process the ammonia, but beneficial bacteria will also form on the surfaces of your substrate, hardscape, glass, etc.

It sounds like you don't currently have enough BB in your filter(s) and the nitrogen cycle was relying on your substrate.
 
How do nitrite and nitrate test? Same as usual?

How about ammonia in tap water?

How about other aquariums?

Is it possible that your water utility used chloramine where they normally used only chlorine?

What water conditioner do you use?
 
OK, About the tap water.

First off, I have a RainSoft DI whole house water conditioner so tap water is all zeros on chlorine, ammonia and all the other nasty stuff found in city water.

The filter is a Marineland Magnum In-tank canister and YES, we kept that in tact with the change.
With this spike, the initial ammonia was a very dark green and nitrItes very high as well. NitrAtes were about 10 PPM.

with the water changes frequently, the numbers are coming down but still too high for me. The wife cot some filter media by Marineland that seems to be helping dissipate the ammonia.

Headed in the right direction but time will tell.

-TF
 
Unless one has a bare bottom tank, I lot of the bacteria is in the top 1/2 or maybe 3/4 of an inch of the substrate. Nelow this there is not enough oxygen unless on has a planted substrate or critters which burrow in the substrate.

We have no way to determine in most tanks where the majority of the bacteria may be. What we do know is they will be in the greatest numbers where what they need is in the greatest supply. So the odds are good that wnat you did in changing out all of the substrate was to remove a large portion of the established bacteria.

At this stage you are doing two things. One is to protect the fish from ammonia and nitrite and the second is to get the bacteria reproducing ASAP. For ammonia the above suggestions are what works. Adding a decent bottled bacteria product will make this go faster. it is easy to block the effects of nitrite using the chloride found in common salt and you do not need a lot of salt to do the job. So the focus should be on getting the ammonia zeroed out and then you can let the ntrite do it's thing and protect the fish with salt.

Near in mind that water changes work to slow a cycle. The bacteria reproduce when there is more ammonia than they need. This makes more nitrite and those bacteria follow suit. This means that during a cycle water changes should only be done when needed for sure. With fishless this issues is that the cycled may have stalled or there is too much ammonia/nitrite present. But with fish the paramount issue is their safety.

" There are two goals in fish in cycling which are diametrically opposed. One is to allow ammonia and nitrite to get high enough to get the cycle done as quickly as possible. The other is to keep the ammonia and nitrite from being high enough to cause permanent harm to the fish. Every water change slows the cycle. But the failure to do one at the proper time can harm or even kill the fish. "

If you want to read the article from which I quoted the above, I can tell you that I know the author very well. ;)
https://www.fishforums.net/threads/rescuing-a-fish-in-cycle-gone-wild-part-il.433778/
 
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