Ammonia Problems

[clairebear76]

Hi all,
New to the forums and wanted to get some much needed advice from all you wonderful people
I bought a small 34 litre tank just over 3 weeks ago. Its only a small Aqua One tank with their own carbon filter, sponge and noodles filtration system. Temp has been steady at around 25 C, and pH is around 7.2.
Its had been running for a week before we took a water sample to our local fish shop who tested it and said we could add a couple of fish. A few minutes later we were leaving the shop the proud parents of two dalmation molly's. Now the fish seem happy enough to us (bearing in mind this is our first tank, lol!) but the ammonia hasn't dropped a bit from 1ppm for the last 2 - 3weeks. We have some chemical additives from the shop to lock the ammonia and also a bottle of bio filter to start the bacteria off but nothing is doing the trick. Also been water changing regularly as per instructions from the shops but is this doing more harm than good?
I've just been reading about seeding the tank with ammonia when you first set it up, which we never did. Mind you, nobody in the shops told us to do it so we just did what they said!
Have we done something wrong or missed something we should have done, or is this normal and I should just be a bit more patient with it?

 

[lee158]

Hi Clairebear76,

The reason pet shops do not advise / know about fishless cycle is becuase it would put most people off buying fish. (you've just bought your tank and have to wait upto 6 weeks before adding fish - most people wouldn't listen to that advise).

I think your 34 litre tank is too small for molly's. This is because they will get too big. The rule is 1 inch of fish per gallon. Your mollies will need just over 3 gallons each - 2 * 3 = 6 = 27l. Fish suitable for a 34l tank would be a few guppys or tetras.

As for the ammonia - you will need to do a 20 % water change every day to get that ammonia down to 0ppm. Ammonia can and will kill fish if left.

You havn't done anything wrong - pet shops are in it for business. I still have problems explaining fishless cycle.

 

[pauly]

You only add ammonia if you're doing a fishless cycle, where as you're doing a cycle with fish.

There will be ammonia in the water until your filter has cycled which could take a while.

You need to find a thread about cycling with fish regarding water changes etc.

Good luck!

Paul.

 

[martyn21uk]

Firstly welcome to the wonderful world of fishkeeping!! I'm not going to go into whether or not you have the right fish for your tank now cos I think whats important at this point is that we get your tank cycled as quickly as possible and as painless to your fish as possible.

Advice given so far is correct and approximately 20% daily water changes will help to dilute the ammonia until your filter has built up enough beneficial bacteria to deal with your fish waste. The one thing I would disagree with in what you are using is the ammolock. I'm sure somebody will correct me if i'm wrong but I believe this product locks your ammonia in your tank so it is not harmful to your fish, but at the same time it means the bacteria needed to break it down will not be formed either. So I think I'm correct in saying that by using it, you are protecting your fish for now, but you will never get anywhere on getting your filter cycled. If I was you I would stop using it.

The beneficial bacteria bottle you have, according to most of us on here is also pretty useless. Technically its impossible for the bacteria you need to live in that bottle and its just another example of the manufactuers making money out of newbies. That being said, it certainly wont do any harm so I would carry on using it.

After you that you need to carry on testing your levels. You've given us ammonia, but what are your readings for Nitrite and nitrate? If any of the levels spike then look to increase the volume of water change you are doing to minimise the stress to your fish. Any reading of ammonia or nitrite is dangerous to fish but you can't avoid it now they are there!! The only other option would be if a friend has an established tank and can look after your fish, or the shop you bought them from will take them back for a while. This will then allow you to do a fishless cycle. If not then its a case of hoping that living in the tank doesn't cause harm to your fish.

Oh just a thought if you do have any friends with established tanks, see if you can have some mature filter media from them. This will kick start your filter cycle brilliantly. If this is an option let us know and we can talk you through how to do that

 

[lee158]

I agree with Martyn,

I do not use chemicals to "help" the cycling process other than pure ammonia for fishless cycling.

 

[rdd1952]

When you took your water in for the LFS to check, it would definitely test fine since there has never been any ammonia added to it. Bsically, it's tap water with the chlorine removed. The product to lock ammonia is probably doing it's job as it doesn't remove ammonia, only change it to ti's non-toxic form of ammonium. Our test kits measure total ammonia which is ammonia + ammonium so even after using the product you will still get the same reading but all of the ammonium will be non-toxic. Ammonia locking products don't work on susequent ammonia though so any ammonia produced by the fish between dosing will still be toxic. It also doesn't have any effect on nitrite which is equally toxic and must also be kept down via water chagnes.

On the water changes, I would suggest larger ones until you get your level down to .25ppm or lower. Do 50% water twice a day until you get the ammonia down and after that 20 to 25 percent changes as needed to keep the levels low.

 

[martyn21uk]

The product to lock ammonia is probably doing it's job as it doesn't remove ammonia, only change it to ti's non-toxic form of ammonium. Our test kits measure total ammonia which is ammonia + ammonium so even after using the product you will still get the same reading but all of the ammonium will be non-toxic. Ammonia locking products don't work on susequent ammonia though so any ammonia produced by the fish between dosing will still be toxic.

Am I right in saying this product will inhibit benficial bacteria growing in the filter though?

 

[clairebear76]

Thanks for all your help guys. I'll take some readings a bit later and post them up here so you get an idea of exactly whats going on in the tank. The fish do seem to have gone a bit quiet, not so much swimming about as they were doing, is this an effect of the ammonia levels?
I started to wonder myself if the ammonia lock would make it difficult to get the tank running sweet. I'm rapidly starting to loose faith in the shops, I'm glad I've got you guys to point me in the right direction

 

[rdd1952]

The product to lock ammonia is probably doing it's job as it doesn't remove ammonia, only change it to ti's non-toxic form of ammonium. Our test kits measure total ammonia which is ammonia + ammonium so even after using the product you will still get the same reading but all of the ammonium will be non-toxic. Ammonia locking products don't work on susequent ammonia though so any ammonia produced by the fish between dosing will still be toxic.

Am I right in saying this product will inhibit benficial bacteria growing in the filter though?

No. It has no effect on the development of the bacteria colony. The nitrifyiing bacteria that process total ammonia (ammonia + ammonium) will process either ammonia or ammonium. Our test kits measure the sum of both of them so we don't know how much of either one is present in our tanks at any time with our referring to a chart that shows the concentrations based on temp and pH.

 

[clairebear76]

Righty ho. I've just tested the tank water and here's what I've got :

Ammonia 0.5 ppm
Nitrite 0.5ppm
Nitrate 20ppm

The ammonia and nitrite have dropped a bit but bear in mind I changed around 40% of the tank water about 2 hours before the test!

 

[clairebear76]

Lost one of the molly's tonight. She'd been very quiet for a few days anyway, didn't think she was quite right
Other one seems fine and dandy though......I take it it would be a bad idea to get him a friend with the tank in its current state, lol!?