Help please...too much amonia

[Anna24]

Hi, I've got a 110l planted tank with 2 platys, 5 fry, 2 danios, 7 shrimp and a nerite snail. The tank was set up about 4 months ago using substrate, water and a filter from a tank that had been going for 3 years. I have added a piece of bog wood about 3 months ago, 2 plastic plants about 6 weeks ago, 4 real plants and a couple of older ornaments in. The amonia levels are out of control. I've been doing water changes and have added amonia remover and i cant bring the level down. Could it be the bog wood? I can't understand how they are so high and I'm really concerned about my shrimp who are all currently hiding in one of the plastic plants. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[Colin_T]

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate every day until the levels come down to 0ppm.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

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if you are concerned about objects in the tank causing this, take them out and put them in a bucket of water. Check the ammonia levels in the bucket of water and see if any occurs. If it does, then that item is producing the ammonia.

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What sort of filter do you have?
How often do you clean the filter?
How do you clean the filter?

 

[Anna24]

Thanks for your quick reply. I got up earlier before work and did what you said. I think it's done the trick, it's .25 now so i will do another change and gravel clean tomorrow night. The shrimps are a lot happier. I've got an AQUAEL ASAP filter 700. I clean it by brushing any debris off the sponge and just gently swishing it in the old tank water. It was a nightmare when I first did it as I couldn't work out how to get it apart. I clean it every 2 weeks. I think there is more debris than usual in the tank as I have been over feeding the fish to try to stop them eating the fry. I have been doing more regular water changes (20% every other day) but I didn't think about the gravel and there was a lot of debris in the gravel under the feeding flap and in the filter when i cleaned that yesterday. Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

 

[Jamesthecat]

Strangely I had a similar thing in my old 100l tank - everything was peachy, i added a nice piece of bogwood from my LFS and kept it soaking for a week or so before i added it.

All of a sudden the ammonia spiked and just couldn’t get it down.

I removed the wood, did a huge water change on the Monday and again on Wednesday and actually carefully took out some gravel and washed in boiling water then slowly replaced it with some filter bio product and it did the trick.

3 water changes a week and regular gravel cleaning along with reducing the feeding seemed to do the trick