New Setup Tank And Cycling...

[tameem]

I have a 55 gallon tank, 12 tiger barbs, 3 cute cory cats. Ive had it running for at least two weeks now, performing daily water tests for ammonia, nitrites and pH. My ammonia has always been .50, unchanged. nitrites 0. Im not sure whre im at with the cycling process, but should I follow my regular water changes or leave it alone for now? I intend to replace about 25% of water every two weeks.

 

[ALEXF]

i would change more water more often as your ammonia is high.

 

[OldMan47]

Alexf is on the money. You have not really started to cycle yet and you need a large partial water change today followed by another tomorrow. After that check your chemistry and if you are over 0.25 ppm ammonia its time for yet another large partial water change.

 

[dthoffsett]

You're going to want to do daily or every other day water changes until your ammonia and nitrite stay at 0. Here's a great article on fish-in cycling.
[URL="http/www.fishforums.net/content/New-to-the-hobby/175355/Whats-cycling-New-tank-and-you-already-have-fish/"]http/www.fishforums.net/content/New-to-t...eady-have-fish/[/URL]

 

[tameem]

Ive read a lot about cycling and three books before I got back into the hobby so I am quite familiar with the nitrogen cycle, just lacking real life first hand experience. The thing is my water has always been around .50. Even when I tested my tap water before setting up the tank, it was .50.
So should I change 30%?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

any reading of ammonia is dangerous, if you get any reading at all you should do a 30% water change. i appreciate your tap water has some ammonia in, quite a few people find this. when the tank is cycled the filter will be able to handle this no problem, keep testing ammonia and nitrite daily, any day you get a readig other than 0 then do a 30% water change, after a few week's it'll drop down to 0, when this happens you can breathe easy

for regularl maintenance i would suggest you should be doing 30% changes weekly not fortnightly, there's a pinned topic at the top of this forum with a step by steo guide to maintenance which will help you.

 

[waterdrop]

I could easily see Denver having chloramination rather than chlorination. Perhaps the 0.50ppm ammonia readings from the tap water were taking after dechloramination? Some ammonium would be created by this reaction as the chlorine and ammonia are separated and would show up as ammonia on the test.

Which ammonia test kit are you using?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[tameem]

Thanks for all your replies. I'm using the API salicylate-based test kits as I feel the test strips are not nearly as accurate. Im pretty sure that I checked my water before dechlorinating the water, and I remember getting ammonia readings.

I use Stress Coat to condition my water. I was thinking of using Amquel+, which deals with the ammonia release and detoxifies it, but I was told by others to jus stick with a good brand water conditioner. Previously when I had attempted to cycle fishless method, I was told that Amquel+ was not the best condtioner to use. I was also told by some to just avoid doing wate rchanges during this stage unless theely go into dangerous levels. Im not too sure that .50 is a real dangverous level, although ideally 0 reading is what we want.

Im also having some trouble feeding my cute cory cats (see separate posting for this). I dont know if they are getting their fare share, as the tiger barbs get to the food. and maybe its the ammonia that is keeping them from eating?? Ive had them in the tank for about a week now...

 

[tameem]

I just tested my tap water without water conditioner and im reading at about the same, .5ppm.

I checked the tank water today and it was also still at .5ppm. Im using stress coat water conditioner, which treats both chlorine and chloramines, but it also says detoxifies ammonia. Is the water conditioner a problem? I was told that this would be a good one, and that I shouldnt use somethig like Amquel+

 

[Miss Wiggle]

using something lie amquel doesn't get rid of the ammonia what it does is deals with excess ammonia caused by breaking the chloramine bond.

chloramine is a combination of chlorine and ammonia, when the dechlor gets rid of the chloramine it releases a small amount of ammonia. what stuff like amquel does is converts this small amount of ammonia to ammonium which is less toxic to fish. it's only designed to work on the small amount of ammonia released in the chloramine breaking process, it's not enough to deal with any other ammonia in the tank. Therefore amquel would make no difference so just stick with a good quality dechlor that deals with chlorine and chloramine and that will be plenty good enough.

with fish in the tank you should be aiming for under .25ppm of ammonia and nitrite, anything above is considered dangerous (even 0.25ppm is not exactly safe).

there's a v strong chance that the cories aren't eating because of the ammonia in the water, they're stressed out which often leads to fish not eating.

 

[tameem]

Im concerned about the corys. is there any corrective action I can take? Since im finding ammonia in my tap water, I'm not sure what I can do right now.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

just keep monitoring the ammonia, if the ammonia in the tank rises up above the level in your tap water then do a water change, if the ammonia in the tank is below the level of ammonia in the tap water then there's no point doing a water change as you won't reduce the levels.

 

[tameem]

This is an update. For the first time today I detected .25 of nitrites! I went ahead and did a 20% water change. hopefully I will start to see decline in my ammonia...
thanks for your help.