Ammonia

[jjande2]

My tank is about two months old. I test it on a regular basis and it always seems to have a high level of ammonia (between 4-8 ppm). Even after water changes it seems high. I've tried putting ammo-chips in the filter, but it doesn't seem to bring it down.

Current inventory in this 10 gal...

1 neon
2 swordtails
4 Zebras
2 gold barbs

I feed them twice a day (AM and PM). To much?

Am I just being overly concerned?

 

[sinistral]

Ammonia of 4-8 ppm seems pretty high for a stable tank. I'm interested to hear about a few other things about the tank: What are your other water parameters (nitrites, pH etc). How regularly have you used the ammochips? Sometimes those products can yield false ammonia readings. How do the fish look? Are you dechlorinating the water during water changes? Also, what about the cycling process at the outset? Did you get zero ammonia at any point?

My hypotheses at this point are that either your ammonia really is that high, or that you are getting false readings somehow. What are the parameters of your tap water?

Sorry for all the rapid-fire questions!

 

[bogusmove]

I'm kinda inclined to be a bit dubious about your test kit too... have you tried testing your tap water (I think you need to let it stand for a few days for all the gases to leave it for accurate results)? I'm not sure fish would survive 4-8 ppm ammonia constantly for all that long.

 

[G_Sharky]

It might be that your getting false results especially when you using ammo-chips as I heard it from many people and in this forum complaining about that product. Also you don't need to feed your fish twice a day some people even feed their fish every other day. Also bogusmove is right that Ammonia on that level is pretty lethal and deadly. If your fish is not showing any signs of stress then your more likely getting false results. Good Luck and let us know what happen...

 

[jjande2]

I did test the tap water. It gives a zero reading. I always treat the water before changes. I got the testing kit after I got fish, so I never did get a zero reading.

The other parameters as of today are...

pH=7.6
N=0
GH=12
A=6

The fish seem to being fine. We have lost a few. I think we started off with to many. We lost 5 neons and 1 swordtail over the past four weeks.

We haven't lost any for about a week. The remaining fish are very active and seem healthy.

 

[sinistral]

Hmmm...How much of a water change are you doing and how frequently? Is it possible to test your tank with another kit?

The concern is that levels of ammonia of 4-8 are quite toxic. Even if the fish seem to be doing alright it's likely that they would be stressed or that their lifespans shortened. I think the most important thing is to establish whether you are getting false reads or not by testing with another kit.

If you are not getting false reads, we need to figure out what's causing the high ammonia levels. It could be anything from an uncycled tank (not enough nitrosomonas colonies to convert ammonia to nitrite), a dead fish hidden someplace in the tank, overfeeding, and so forth. Finally, it would be important to bring down the ammonia with water changes.

If I had to guess given the information you've provided, I would say that the tank never completely went through a full nitrogen cycle and colonies of nitrosomonas and nitrobacter never grew in, and that the high levels of ammonia may be inhibiting further bacterial growth.

All is not lost! Zebras are a very hardy species, and swordtails from what I understand are fairly hardy as well. I'm not sure about barbs...neons aren't the ideal species to cycle a tank as from what I've heard they are hit or miss in terms of hardiness. The book I have suggests they don't tolerate high levels of ammonia well.

I'd also encourage you to read the pinned topic in Beginner Questions entitled "Avoiding and Treating New Tank Syndrome" by Alien Anna. It's a terrific read and it may address a lot of the questions you have right now. Good luck! Keep us posted!