My Low Light 10 Gallon

well, you're going to have some break down whenever you introduce wood, and you might have some dead fry and uneaten food breaking down as well... or you could have ammonia in your tap water. or maybe something in the background is breaking down... or your fishless cycle may not have kept up... one way or another, all you can do is continue monitoring and water changing frequently. it will stablize with time.
 
zpromoter said:
If anyone can help me shed some light on a topic here.....

My ammonia has been spiking really bad lately. I have been doing 50-70% water changes for the last three days and can't seem to get the ammonia to go down. Nitrites and Nitrates are in normal conditions. I can't seem to figure out the problem.

From API liquid test kit:

Ammonia: 2ppm (Tested at this for three straight days now)
Nitrates: 0
Nitrite: (barely registers)

The tank was put through a fishless cycle when it was just sitting for a month. It has been over 1 week now since the fish were introduced. Anubias plants look healthy so I don't think they are causing the problem. The rotala that I just added is losing some of the bottom leaves. I am just thinking that this is normal since it was grown emersed and now is submersed. The driftwood was boiled for 3 hours before placing it in the tank. I do 15% water changes every week, and stir the sand up every two weeks. Lights are left on for 9 hours a day. Everyone is swimming around like it is no big deal. Is there something in the tank that I need to be looking for?

What could be the problem?
Click to expand...



That is not fishless cycling. Fishless cycling is where you add ammonia to the tank to get the bacteria to grow. The ammonia is their food source. No ammonia=no food source=no good bacteria. It does not sound like you cycled your tank.

Get the buckets ready and stock up on water conditioner because your now trapped in a fish in cycle and you will have to do DAILY large water changes to combat the ammonia and nitrite.
 
Jspigs said:
That is not fishless cycling. Fishless cycling is where you add ammonia to the tank to get the bacteria to grow. The ammonia is their food source. No ammonia=no food source=no good bacteria. It does not sound like you cycled your tank.

Get the buckets ready and stock up on water conditioner because your now trapped in a fish in cycle and you will have to do DAILY large water changes to combat the ammonia and nitrite.
Click to expand...


Maybe I forgot to mention that part. I did add ammonia to create the fishless cycle. I tested it the whole time.

I think the background should be fine. I have had them before the same way with no problems.

There is a couple dead fry that I can't reach in the back of the background. Could this be the problem? Will they decay all the way out of the system?
 
zpromoter said:
Maybe I forgot to mention that part. I did add ammonia to create the fishless cycle. I tested it the whole time.

I think the background should be fine. I have had them before the same way with no problems.

There is a couple dead fry that I can't reach in the back of the background. Could this be the problem? Will they decay all the way out of the system?
Click to expand...

If you added ammonia and you tested then your tank is cycled :).
 
How big are the fry? I can't see any in the pics. I'm Surprised that a couple of dead ones would spike the ammonia like that, but you do have the additional bioload to deal with.
 
Well I believe that I have found myself in the middle of a mini cycle. I added filter media from my 30 gallon convict tank to this tank to help it seed and hopefully speed this process up! I also added some pygmy chain swords to the forground and changed the placment of the rocks to help as a visual barrier for the gobies' territories. Please let me know what you think. I'll show a progress of the tank to show how different it looks.

10/22
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10/23
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10/29
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11/2
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Enjoy!

Do you think I should still try and get some moss/pellia for the driftwood, rocks and background?
 
beautiful! and def go find some flame moss. That stuff looks amazing
 
I attached java moss and java ferms to my driftwood with fishing line and it looks so much better in my tank. They are both low light plants and most fish stores carry java ferns and java moss. I love your tank it will look nicer when all the plants fill in with time. The java moss on the drift wood is easy to trim when it gets long. I also attached moss to my rocks. I used that bath loafa thing and cut it and put the net over the rocks with moss and twisted it on the bottom and used a plastic tie wrap to sucure it. looks nice and is easy to trim the rocks.
 
Regarding looking for pygmy cory species, I believe MsJinx has some for sale in the classifieds. Unless she has sold out. Check with her.
 
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