Persistent Ammonia and fish dying

[xiaosong]

Hello everyone. I'm new to this forum and new to fish keeping and I've been doing a lot of reading but I'm still confused as to what is happening with my fish. Sorry for the long post but I figure the more information i give, the better sense you guys have of my tank.

I started setting up a tank almost 2 months ago. The tank is an eclipse 12 (biowheel, 150gph filtration) with plastic plants along the sides as well as two rock things with holes in them with the plants and a cave slightly off to the side.

The tank was cycled (or what I thought was cycled) with biospira (half of a packet for 30 gallons) and 3 red eye tetras per the direction of my LFS (supposedly the best in manhattan (New World Aquarium). During the cycling, my water parameters seemed sort of odd. The pH stayed around 7, the ammonia was 0, nitrites were 0 but the nitrates were also around 0. Since my 3 red eye tetras seemed to be doing ok and after a month of cycling, I did a water change (50%) and vacuummed the gravel. I gave my red eye tetras away and proceeded to add 6 neon tetras along with the other half of the biospira packet. I also got a heater, which is set at 81, which was recommended by my LFS.

My neons were doing great in the new tank, even coming up to the top of the water to get flakes, which according to my LFS, they are not supposed to do. After a week with the new tetras, I cleaned the tank and I decided to go ahead and add 3 glowlight tetras. I also bought some plastic floating plants so I could start having the light on in the tank.

I added the glowlights on a saturday, and started having problems on monday.

Initially, the glowlights did not seem to get enough food because the neons, which seemed much faster and agile, would come up to the surface and eat most of the food before it got a chance to fall. I was feeding flakes and some of these pellets that were supposed to bring out the natural colors of fish. On monday, I went and bought some Hakari freeze dried bloodworms to feed my fish.

When I was feeding that night, I noticed that one of my glowlights was in the cave gasping, occasionally coming out to chase a neon away and not really coming out to eat. The next afternoon, when I was doing a headcount of my tank, i noticed that the glowlight was missing and found him dead near my water intake. After pulling him out, I decided to check my water and found the ammonia to be 0.5 and nitrites to be 0. I proceeded to do a water change of about 30% and afterwards, the ammonia was brought down to 0.25

After reading about it online, it seems like i might have cause my tank to have a minicycle, maybe due to the new glowlights, maybe cleaning the gravel too much or feeding too much to ensure that the glowlights got enough food.

However, during this time, the 6 neon tetras and 2 glowlights still seemed to be doing fine until i noticed that 2 of them seemed to have some white fuzzy stuff, very tiny, near their mouth. I thought this could have been fungus, maybe due to the fact that their immune systems were stressed out with the high ammonia. However, it did not seem to spread so I decided to try and fix the water first.

Two days later, I lost the second glowlight. Before it started to show the same symptoms as the first one, i had just feed the tank bloodworms. It seemed like a strange coincidence that after I feed the bloodworms, my glowlights started to display symptoms of gasping. The second glowlight was gasping for air at the top of the water before it died so i assumed the high ammonia had burned its gills.

After that happened, and after doing water changes which did not seem to be changing the level of ammonia, it still stayed at 0.25, I went to my LFS and they recommended getting some biospira, which was refrigerated.

I added the biospira on thursday in hopes of helping bring down the ammonia to 0 but so far it hasn't happened.

Yesterday, I checked my water quality again, and measuring everything again with a control, which was the water that I add treated with API stress coat which is supposed to treat chlorine and chloramide. The ammonia was still 0.25, and the control was 0. The nitrites was slightly darker than the control, but if I did not have the control, i would have said that the nitrites were 0. The nitrates might have been a tinge darker than the control, but essentially zero as well. However, my pH was a 6.7 while the control was a 7.

Since I read that low pH could inhibit beneficial bacterial growth, I did a 20% water change without vacuuming the gravel and added some more of the biospira. I also cleaned out my mechanical filter by rinsing it to get rid of anything that might contribute to ammonia levels. Looking at the biowheel, it is gray and occasionally slows down so i think it is colonized. After giving the fish some time to settle down, i went ahead and fed them. Since I had tried only feed every other day to see if that was the cause of the ammonia, all of my fish except one neon ate very well. That one neon stayed hidden behind my cave.

This morning, the neon was having trouble swimming and I removed it right before it died. I proceeded to do a test of my water, pH was around 7, ammonia was 0.25, nitrites were 0, nitrates were 0. I think the neon could have died due to the change in pH though I'm not sure how my pH could have changed so much with a 20% water change.

I'm not quite sure what exactly is killing my fish, because the neons were fine up to this point and I thought they were the most sensitive to ammonia while the glowlights should have been hardier. So now all i have are 5 neons and 1 glowlight tetra left.

I'm not sure what to do, or how to proceed. Any help is appreciated and sorry for the long post.

 

[Star_Rider]

When you say you cleaned the tank..how did you clean it?

sounds like the tank has not cycled or if it had cycled you may have wiped out the bacteria.

It is ppossible that the bio-spira was bad too..it does have a shelf life but it's hard to say.

most of the bacteria would have inhabited that.
When you rinsed the mechanical filter..was the wheel rinsed also?

are you using the test strips? you may want to consider using the drops instead(generally gives a more accurate reading).

generally when the tank cycles you will see a spike in ammonia then a spike in the nitrites then a rise in the nitrates.
did you do tests as you were cycling with the bio-spira when you first setup the tank?

even with the bio spir I would expect to see a small rise in ammonia,the ammonia goes to 0 as the nitrites rise..

I had similar problems with a large tank I had started using a seeded filter..I finally added stability aftger the cycle was hung for a week at .25+ ammonia.

within a week the tank cycled.

ps if you smell the wheel it should have an earth smell to it(like fresh dirt)

 

[xiaosong]

Thanks for the prompt reply star_rider.

Cleaning the tank: I use a siphon to take out the water and at the same time vacuum up some gravel. However, one thing that i did differently yesterday was that i noticed a lot of bacteria builtup on the wire of my heater. I wiped some of that off because i wasn't sure if it was the good kind or bad kind. Maybe that wasn't such a good idea.

Yeah, i guess the biospira could have been bad, though a batch from the same LFS seemed to work for the red eyed tetras. Or maybe it didn't back them either.

I only rinsed the mechanical filter, i've been leaving the wheel alone and I smelled it, it's got sorta of a earth smell to it.

I'm using the Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Freshwater Master Test Kits Freshwater, so it's the drops, not the test strips.

I did test when i was first cycling the tank and I got 0 for ammonia and 0 for nitrites though my nitrates would hover around a 1 or 2 ppm. I thought that was weird but i wasn't sure how much of a bioload 3 red eye tetras placed on a 12 gallon tank with weekly water changes.

Hope that helps. An update, another one of my neons is very pale in color though the other four are ok. I think i might have done something during the water change last night, maybe the change in ph is hurting them as the ammonia and nitrite levels seem to be ok.

 

[rrkss]

Ok here is what needs to be done. Get rid of that stress coat (at least until after you've cycled the tank though I don't think that amine polymers and aloe vera are neccessary for good fish help). Go buy yourself a bottle of Seachem Prime and treat your water with that prior to biospira. Do a 90% waterchange (This will not harm the fish as your water is quite fresh at the moment). Treat the new water with prime to get as much of the stress coat out of the water as possible. Then add the entire packet of biospira (shaking it until your arms fall off prior to opening it). 0.25 ppm ammonia at a pH of 7 is not going to harm your fish so something else is amiss. The aliphatic amine salts in stress coat in my experience does not work with bio-spira. It is fine in a cycled tank but bio-spira does not like these chemicals. This should fix the problems.

 

[Star_Rider]

Yikes...I missed the stress coat.

I don't use that and I have never recommended it.

as rrkss says..use prime

 

[xiaosong]

Thanks rrkss,

So i can just leave my fish in the tank during the 90% water change?
The API stress coat was recommended to me by my LFS as something to use to take the chlorine and chloramine in the water. So should I use Seachem Prime from now on? The other question i had was, i still have a packet of marineland labs bio-safe and bio-coat that came with my tank. On the marineland website, it recommends using biosafe to treat the water first, and then adding biospira. Can i just do that? And should I use bio-coat in the future to treat new water or do you think seachem prime is the best?

Thanks for all your help, i really appreciate it.

 

[Star_Rider]

I always leave my fish in the tank during a water change..

I add the prime to the source in my tank I use buckets for now..but you can add to the tank and add water.

I started using prime last week with no effect on the fish.

in my case the water is changes on the 75 that has a wet/dry system.

I can vac the gravel or just change the water.. during the warm months (like now) I drain the water to my grass in my yard..and have a feed going to the sump..
the sump continues running I siphon the water from the tank in the opposite side on the bottom of the tank, new water comes in thru the sump at the top of the tank. I change out 30-40 gallons this way..currently I use buckest to try and get the timing down..I will eventually switch to aged preheated water.

 

[rrkss]

Thanks rrkss,

So i can just leave my fish in the tank during the 90% water change?
The API stress coat was recommended to me by my LFS as something to use to take the chlorine and chloramine in the water. So should I use Seachem Prime from now on? The other question i had was, i still have a packet of marineland labs bio-safe and bio-coat that came with my tank. On the marineland website, it recommends using biosafe to treat the water first, and then adding biospira. Can i just do that? And should I use bio-coat in the future to treat new water or do you think seachem prime is the best?

Thanks for all your help, i really appreciate it.

Since you have biosafe already just use that after the 90% waterchange and add the bio-spira. Wait 48 hours but test after 24 hours. Within 48 hours I am sure the ammonia worries will be a thing of the past. I love prime and use that as my primary water conditioner but bio-safe is pretty much the same thing except more expensive and less concentrated.

 

[Ms.Bubbles]

Once you get your water problem sorted out, it is really adviseable to quarantine any new fish for a few weeks before you add them to a tank with other fish in it. Even if the fish all come from the same store, they may come from different breeders, and can introduce deadly disease into a tank that had been healthy and otherwise doing well.

 

[mikesoverhere]

I just had a similar problem with my 16 gallon 16 tetras ,3 swords,2 algie eaters,2 mollies,1 goumais. I've been told over stocked yes me crazy,but I just added amolock 2 and replaced my ammo-rid stones yesterday.level was at .5 + yesterday I did an 80% water change and now with big-als all purpose water conditioner + ammo-lock 2 and aqua-sol my ammonia is below .25 and dropping wew I was worried but knock on wood it won't happen again.