Huge Amonia Spike

[liamhuckle]

Hi all just transfered my stock from my 90l to my new 249l transfered the media this was saturday evening


Tested the water today and ammonia is 2ppm did 50% water change and ammonia still 2ppm

Tap water is testing 0.25

Any advice on what to do or antthing i can buy to help reaolve this


Thanks

 

[Zikofski]

there are many options, you can go and buy some bacteria in a bottle some say they will help some say they wont, i have herd carbon pads will help reduce ammonia for a short term like 2 to 3 weeks, and also a large water change like near 90 to 100% and keep doing them until the water is good do you know what may have caused this? is it a new tank?


ignore new tank bit haha have you added new fish?

 

[liamhuckle]

No new fish same stock only thing changed is the tank and substrate which is only 2-3mm black gravel

Wouldnt i have exoected to have lost fish with ammonia this high

 

[KittyKat]

What's the pH? The harmfulness of the ammonia depends on the pH and some other conditions.
 
Did you dechlorinate the new tank water? Did you use as much of the old water as possible?
 
For the immediate future, keep up the water changes and use a dechlorinator that "deals" with ammonia and nitrite.

 

[DrRob]

As KittyKat says, temperature and pH have a large effect on ammonia toxicity. Nitrite is the real killer with ammonia and that may be the issue you have coming up so keep up the fresh water to keep that one down.
 
As for the staying at 2ppm, it may have been above what the test kit can reliably read and 2ppm is all it can say, so 50% change brought it to something still above 2. It's why tend to do big changes like 90% if I want to dilute a toxin, that way 2 becomes 0.2, which is much easier to deal with.

 

[liamhuckle]

Temp is 28c and ph was 6.2 and nitrite ill have to check

 

[DrRob]

Acidic is good for ammonia toxicity, which may be what's saving you.

 

[Lunar Jetman]

I guess the only thing to add is to change water regularly to try and get those levels down.

 

[liamhuckle]

Im going to do a 80% change tonyt and get some bacteria in a bottle hopefully get it under control nitrite was 1 yhis morning

 

[DrRob]

nitrite was 1 yhis morning

 
That's your danger, water changes to get this down are a must. Keep up the good work, it'll get there. The fact that the filter made nitrite nice and quickly means that the bacteria are still holding on, just a bit miffed. Or that there was a load of ammonia that was way beyond what they were set up to handle. Not sure what that would have come from though.

 

[liamhuckle]

Right just been to lfs and bought prime and stabiloty by seachem


Dosed prime 5x dose as it states you can in emergency

And stability bought on advice from trusted shop assistant basically on the bottle it sounds like if you use this for a week your tank is cycled im not sure if i believe this but im willing to try to prevent

So when home tonight 50-80% wc and dose prime again

Hopefully see some results

All fish still looking healthy

 

[Shaddex]

I find it strange that you are having ammonia / nitrite spikes after transferring mature media.
Moving media between filters is an "Insta-Cycle" and I cant see why you are getting those readings.
 
Did you wash the media before you put it in the new filter ?  If so, did you use tank water to rinse it ?
 
Good luck and keep up the water changes !!
 
Oh, Let us know how you go on with the "Bac-in-a-bottle" as I've never found one that works...

 

[This Old Spouse]

The media that was transferred came from a much smaller tank, so I'd imagine it's having a hard time dealing with all the additional water to process. Large water changes until it normalizes seems the trick.

 

[liamhuckle]

No never washed the.media i dont know if it suffering with the.higher.flow rate.and.volume of.water

 

[DrRob]

Might be the flow rate change. Might be the change in water chemistry as you must have filled the tank from somewhere to get to the greater volume.