Ammonia!!

[MamaFish]

Okay I just did the parms in my tank, cause 'Goldie' my male gold gourami was swimming at the surface. Looked like he was dying for air! (He's still alive BTW)

so this is what I came up with.

Ammonia : .5-1.0
pH - 7.6 (same as always)
NitrIte - 0 ppm (same as always)

Now I did a water change earlier today and did everything like I used to, thou I lost a fish afterwards. My Blue Female Gourami, Gem She got stuck between the driftwood and aquarium. I thought there was plenty of space between the two. I am sadden that it happened.

I do not know how long she was in the tank after her pass. Thou as soon as my middle son told me I removed her. I did the water change at Noon and finished at about 12:30 (with kids it takes a while) and I found her at 12:55. That wouldn't have happened to put ammonia in my tank would it?

I did not feed today since yesterday I did not do the water change and fasting as normal so I did them today.

What could be causing this Ammonia break?

TIA

 

[smb]

It's very hard for fish to die all of a sudden unless we do it to them ourselves.

If a fish we've had for a while is doing great, then all of a sudden within a few hours it dies, I can almost gaurantee it's something we've done.

We've all done that at one time or another...and we'll all do it again someday no matter how good we are.

So the question is what happened?

This might take a lot of troubleshooting and a lot of people asking questions from the simple to more expert. I'll start with the simple for now and we'll all go from there. Hopefully we'll come to a conclusion soon between all of us.

Did you do a check of your tapwater after you found this out?

Having a .5-1.0 ammonia level is pretty high and can kill fish over time. How long has it been this high?

How often and what amount do you do water changes/gravel cleans? What all fish are in the tank?

 

[MamaFish]

It's never been this high except when I first got the tank and did not know about fishless cycling.

There is not a sign of ammonia in my tap water. I did a 75% water change and removed the plants and driftwood so I could clean the gravel.

I do 25% water changes every other week. A 75% the other 2 weeks and do a gravel vac these times as well.

There was:

4 Gouramis (2 Blue, 2 Gold)
4 Tiger Barbs
1 Rubbernose Pleco
1 GCAE

 

[Angel Lady]

why did you change so much of your water out for I hope you didnt throw your tank into a mini cycle. My tanks did the exact same thing with the ammonia spike and I finally figured it out the carbon is only good for four weeks and after that they say it lets the stuff that it had been filtering out back in to your tank and sure enough I changed out the carbon and a day later the ammonia went back down mabey you can try that and see if that may be your problem

 

[lordmoose]

There is not a sign of ammonia in my tap water. I did a 75% water change and removed the plants and driftwood so I could clean the gravel.

I do 25% water changes every other week. A 75% the other 2 weeks and do a gravel vac these times as well.

You really shouldn't change as much as 75% at any time. I change about 20% every week. Also don't use tap water unless you've dechlorinated first.

 

[MamaFish]

Well I changed that much cause I took a mini vacation and I did not change the water for almost 3 weeks!!

I do dechlorinate my water before it hits the tank.

The ammonia is down, I think I did not rinse out the test tubes good enough before I did another test.

 

[smb]

The ammonia is down, I think I did not rinse out the test tubes good enough before I did another test.

Hoping that means everything is ok now?

I was actually going to PM you tonight just to ask you if everything was going alright and to ask for any updates.