Newbie Help Re Ammonia

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Well put Harlequins. Adding fish to a tank that is not yet fully cycled is a terrible idea. Sorry folks, I do not understand or follow PC ways of saying things.
Weezebegs, please do not add any more fish. Harlequins is quite right. Any new fish that you add will simply make things worse, (I admitted that I had no skill at being PC didn't I?) What you are facing is that you are doing water changes simply to stay even with the present biological load of the tank.
If you add any fish, that task will become harder. Unless you are some kind of ironman, you will fail by adding more fish that require more and larger water changes. In my own way of advising new hobbyists, I always suggest that even deaths of new fish not be replaced until the cycle has finished. That means that a loss of a fish indicated that the regime you have adopted is not enough for the number and size fish that you had. By refusing to replace them, you will come closer to being able to support the remaining fish. In my own, perhaps flawed, opinion that places you closer to a population that you are willing to support with water changes.

I am feeling a bit deflated to be honest with you.
I have now had fish for 7 weeks and I am still doing large daily water changes.
every time i do a water change my ammonia drops to .25 and the next day back up to .50.

I am cleaning my gravel, doing a 70% water change every day and still my ammonia is not dropping.
Do you think I should have left it a bit longer before I added my second bunch of fish.
I was looking forward to adding more fish, but these daily water changes are getting to me now.

Sorry if I am sounding fedup, but I guess I am not enjoying my fish as much as I want to too as all I am doing is stressing about the Ammonia levels.

I am adding de-chlorinator to every water change, what about adding filter start, will this help speed up the cycle
 
It hasn't helped adding the guppies,has mentioned you haven't let you filter catch up with the bio load of the first lot of fish,let alone the second.

Until your filter can handle these fish,you will need to keep at the waterchanges or the fish will suffer,this is why if peeps do a fish in cycle,it's normally with just a couple of fish until cycled,you affectively doubled the bio load by adding the guppies,therefore knocking the cycling process back.

When you do a waterchange you say its on 0.25ppm,well try to get it even lower,if necessary do another w/c a while after,the closer you keep it to zero the easier it will become to keep it down to a manageable rate.

Any ammount of ammonia in the tank is lethal to fish,and the longer they are in it the weaker they become and eventually die.

Filter start is another product thats not much use,bacteria doesn't live in a bottle,you could try it,but may end up wasting money.

Your senario is why i don't agree with 'fish in' cycle,its so hard for the fish keeper and fish alike suffer and make it an on going chore to keep the fish alive.

Keep at it,keep the ammonia & nitrite down to has close to zero has possible with has many w/c's a day has it needs,it will eventually cycle,but until then advise is - dont add fish.
 
It hasn't helped adding the guppies,has mentioned you haven't let you filter catch up with the bio load of the first lot of fish,let alone the second.

Until your filter can handle these fish,you will need to keep at the waterchanges or the fish will suffer,this is why if peeps do a fish in cycle,it's normally with just a couple of fish until cycled,you affectively doubled the bio load by adding the guppies,therefore knocking the cycling process back.

When you do a waterchange you say its on 0.25ppm,well try to get it even lower,if necessary do another w/c a while after,the closer you keep it to zero the easier it will become to keep it down to a manageable rate.

Any ammount of ammonia in the tank is lethal to fish,and the longer they are in it the weaker they become and eventually die.

Filter start is another product thats not much use,bacteria doesn't live in a bottle,you could try it,but may end up wasting money.

Your senario is why i don't agree with 'fish in' cycle,its so hard for the fish keeper and fish alike suffer and make it an on going chore to keep the fish alive.

Keep at it,keep the ammonia & nitrite down to has close to zero has possible with has many w/c's a day has it needs,it will eventually cycle,but until then advise is - dont add fish.

Thanks, don't mean to sound negative, I was told by my LFS that I had completed my cycle, hence why I added the guppies, but I have now learn't not to listen to them but listen to you guys.

Readings tonight after a large water change are
Ammonia .25
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0

I think once I have finished this cycle I am going to leave the tank understocked for a while to enjoy what I have before adding more fish and cycling again.

Thanks for sticking with me
 
Well put Harlequins. Adding fish to a tank that is not yet fully cycled is a terrible idea. Sorry folks, I do not understand or follow PC ways of saying things.
Weezebegs, please do not add any more fish. Harlequins is quite right. Any new fish that you add will simply make things worse, (I admitted that I had no skill at being PC didn't I?) What you are facing is that you are doing water changes simply to stay even with the present biological load of the tank.
If you add any fish, that task will become harder. Unless you are some kind of ironman, you will fail by adding more fish that require more and larger water changes. In my own way of advising new hobbyists, I always suggest that even deaths of new fish not be replaced until the cycle has finished. That means that a loss of a fish indicated that the regime you have adopted is not enough for the number and size fish that you had. By refusing to replace them, you will come closer to being able to support the remaining fish. In my own, perhaps flawed, opinion that places you closer to a population that you are willing to support with water changes.

I am feeling a bit deflated to be honest with you.
I have now had fish for 7 weeks and I am still doing large daily water changes.
every time i do a water change my ammonia drops to .25 and the next day back up to .50.

I am cleaning my gravel, doing a 70% water change every day and still my ammonia is not dropping.
Do you think I should have left it a bit longer before I added my second bunch of fish.
I was looking forward to adding more fish, but these daily water changes are getting to me now.

Sorry if I am sounding fedup, but I guess I am not enjoying my fish as much as I want to too as all I am doing is stressing about the Ammonia levels.

I am adding de-chlorinator to every water change, what about adding filter start, will this help speed up the cycle

Adding more fish certainly wouldn't of helped matters, besides setting up a tank is all part of the fun and games of looking after fish. Its most rewarding when its all complete, and you see happy healthy fish swimming around :)
 
I am feeling a bit deflated to be honest with you.
I have now had fish for 7 weeks and I am still doing large daily water changes.
every time i do a water change my ammonia drops to .25 and the next day back up to .50.

I remember it well, cycling a tank with fish in is very frustrating. If you're diligent about it you'll pop out the other side and things will be OK, it just requires lots of effort and patience :)

Feed them less. Fish don't need to eat every day, so only feed them a little bit every 2nd day. Any food you put in the tank WILL be converted to ammonia whether it rots on its own or gets digested. Any ammonia needs to be processed! Your pH is above 7 so you have to keep your level at or below 0.25ppm. Any higher will certainly damage the fish. If you feed them less your ammonia problems will not be as bad. You (like me) are probably feeding them way too much.

Fewer, larger water changes is better than hundreds of 10% water changes. Gravel syphon the tank as low as you can, almost down to the gravel. Turn the filter off, fill the tank again with temperature-matched water and add enough dechlor to cater for the full tank volume. Wait 20 minutes for dechlor to work before turning the filter back on, you don't want to risk pumping chlorine through your "unpopulated" media.. you may also have success using a bacteria supplement, I used Stability and I think it helped.

You will get there in the end, just be wary of ever introducing chlorinated tap water to your filter media - that will set you back instantly. There's no need to clean the filter while you're cycling either, unless it looks FILTHY. If it does, then clean it in the old tank water you've just drained.
 
Ah! Excellent post by Geoff (and I think I even remember when he was fish-in cycling! :lol: ) WD

Have just done another large water change, the good news was that the ammonia was actually .25 before I started today so lets hope this is a step in the right direction. How long after a water change before I should re-test, I always wait an hour I suppose

I have another question though....been reading books etc and I wanted to know how often you change the filter sponges/carbon as the books say 4-6 weeks but surely you would have to cycle again, I am mis-understanding this.
I have an Interpet Internal power filter
 
Do you have a carbon pack in that filter? Here is the problem: carbon filters (usually in those floss-like packets) tend to saturate after a period of time (like 4 weeks). When I first started my tank I noticed that the carbon pack only lasted 3 weeks, and then the water started going to the overflow and not through my media. After consulting with this forum I learned that you really only need to use carbon filters if you want to help remove chemicals from the water, such as after you have treated the tank with medicine. Otherwise they will need replacing every month, and then you are discarding helpful bacteria that have populated the floss covering of the carbon.

So to answer your question - yes - that carbon packet will need replacing - but it can cause a setback in your cycling when you get rid of it. Some users have been known to cut open the carbon pack, discard the innards, and keep the floss part in the filter to minimize the impact.

RECOMMENDATIONS:
1. Get rid of the carbon (keep the floss part if you want - leave it in the filter if possible) and replace it with a sponge or other bio-media like ceramic pellets. This might set back your cycling time.

2. The sponges that you already have in there - keep them as long as humanly possible, and when you clean the filter, just gently rinse them in a bucket of tank water. It's okay if they are discolored and old looking - just try to gently remove the particulate stuff and get them back to work!
 
Do you have a carbon pack in that filter? Here is the problem: carbon filters (usually in those floss-like packets) tend to saturate after a period of time (like 4 weeks). When I first started my tank I noticed that the carbon pack only lasted 3 weeks, and then the water started going to the overflow and not through my media. After consulting with this forum I learned that you really only need to use carbon filters if you want to help remove chemicals from the water, such as after you have treated the tank with medicine. Otherwise they will need replacing every month, and then you are discarding helpful bacteria that have populated the floss covering of the carbon.

So to answer your question - yes - that carbon packet will need replacing - but it can cause a setback in your cycling when you get rid of it. Some users have been known to cut open the carbon pack, discard the innards, and keep the floss part in the filter to minimize the impact.

RECOMMENDATIONS:
1. Get rid of the carbon (keep the floss part if you want - leave it in the filter if possible) and replace it with a sponge or other bio-media like ceramic pellets. This might set back your cycling time.

2. The sponges that you already have in there - keep them as long as humanly possible, and when you clean the filter, just gently rinse them in a bucket of tank water. It's okay if they are discolored and old looking - just try to gently remove the particulate stuff and get them back to work!

Ok, instructions say...sorry I am new.....

That i have a "white foam to provide the bulk of the mechanical filtration" and a black "carbon impregnated foam".

It is coming up to 5 weeks now so any advice is much appreciated - BTW they have given me a spare white foam but not a black one
 
I have not come across carbon impregnated foam - so I am not certain if it will have the same saturation problem as carbon fiber inserts. Perhaps you will be okay with it. Maybe you can post a link with a picture of what it looks like.
 
Yes, media takes some learning for beginners and then has aspects we all keep learning more about over the years. Many experienced aquarists pride themselves in having media that runs for decades - that's what the competition is all about between things like sponges, ceramics and pot-scrubbers, so see which ones can last the most decades while doing the best job.

As GVG said, sponges will last many years with just regular rinses in tank water at the needed interval when the filter is being cleaned. The bacteria are like a brown stain tightly bonded to the media surfaces, so dunking and squeezing to loosen and removed organic debris will not lower the bacterial counts by that much. Ceramic rings or chunks or gravel will have their debris removed when the media tray is dunked and swished in tank water.

Carbon (aka activated charcoal) is best kept on the shelf for special needs. It removes medications, yellow wood tannins and the rare organic odor of unknown origin. When put in the filter it lasts about 3 days, after that it is no longer performing chemical filtration in most cases and after a couple of weeks will begin to clog with organic debris, as GVG mentioned.

The -replacement- of carbon and sponges with new ones is usually undertaken by people who don't yet understand biofiltration and is promoted by entities hoping to make money on a regular basis. Years down the road, when you do end up making a change, you usually do it in fractions, perhaps 1/3 of a sponge at a time, by cutting both the old and new ones with scissors. The 2/3 mature sponge that remains will seed new bacterial colonies in the 1/3 new piece that replaced the removed part.

In your case, a black "carbon impregnated" sponge is not really a bed of carbon and there's no problem just keeping it for use as a "sponge." (Sponges, like most types of media, fall into more than one category of media: the serve as both biomedia and mechanical media (and in your case, chemical for the first 3 days, lol.)) Ceramic rings and coarse sponges excel at large mechanical filtration (trapping of larger particles) but also have a biological component in that their surfaces also make good places for bacteria. Ceramic gravels and plain gravel beds can serve as good biological media, like sponges. Pot scrubbers (avoiding any that are pre-soaped of course) and "bioballs" (balls composed of plasic rib structures) make good biomedia in large filters and sumps because they have a lot of surface area but avoid clogging over long periods. They are less efficient of space in medium to smaller filters, where ceramics or sponges are probably better (well, bioballs are less efficient than pot scrubbers in this regard.) Polyfloss, either like cotton or in pads, is used for fine mechanical filtration and is the one media type that is often tossed and replaced when it starts to break down. A filter should have enough true biomedia that the loss of a mature floss pad has no effect on biological filtration.

A filter is a very interesting thing. You want to clean it at regular enough intervals that good flow is maintained because the bacteria need fresh oxygenated water, in addition to their supply of ammonia, which they get both from the new ammonia constantly flowing in and from the ammonia being produced within the filter as the heterotrophs break down the organic debris trapped in the filter. And yet you also of course want filter media that does a good job trapping debris, so that good trapping ability is working against your desire to keep things clean and flowing. This is why regular maintenance must not be neglected.

We have two indicators that help us know how often we should clean our filter. The first and most obvious is reduced flow. This always trumps other habits. If you notice reduced flow then you need to clean. The second indicator comes from our aquarium notebook (which of course we keep daily, right?) Here, we scan down the page and look at our regular nitrate(NO3) test results and see whether they seem to be holding steady or are trying in increase a lot on us. It takes time to get a feel for this for a given aquarium (and especially if you are in only your first year or two of being an aquarist) Generally, we'd like a tank to balance at a max of 15 to 20ppm -above- whatever the tap water nitrate(NO3) reading is. It's not terrible if it's worse than that as long as it stays steady.

Nitrate(NO3) is our "canary in the coal mine" chemical test. Each week we test it and remove it with the weekly substrate-clean-water-change because we don't want a nitrate buildup, BUT also because there are hundreds of other substances we want to keep from concentrating and nitrate is just "symbolic" of those other substances (ie. we know they too are building up but we don't have the time or money to test for all of them so we use nitrate as our "canary.") [By the way, for folks you may not have heard that saying, the canary stops singing and sometimes dies if there are poisonous gasses released during the mining, warning the coal miners to quickly get out of the mine.]

OK, hope that's a filter media post you can come back to if you want to be reminded of things and that it perhaps helps you a little with your current questions.

~~waterdrop~~ B-)
 
Thanks, WD - learned something new again! I didn't know the bacteria were a uniform brown stain - that explains why the white sponges in my fluval have turned all brown (not with debris - but the actual surface color).
 
Has mentioned - Only change filter sponge media if its literally falling apart... has you are still cycling,leave your filter alone unless the flow has slowed right down,

The sponges can be gently rinsed in used tank water (never tap water)every month or so or again if the flow slows down.

Carbon sponges have limited usage,once the carbon is used up,they will just act has another sponge,again this only needs replacing if you need to put carbon in the filter if you need to remove meds after treating any fish.

Yes you are correct,if you did change the sponges like the manufactures suggest,then you would be cycling every 4-6 wks :rolleyes:

Edit to add -oops didn't see page 3 :blush: :rolleyes: :lol:
 
:lol:
Has mentioned - Only change filter sponge media if its literally falling apart... has you are still cycling,leave your filter alone unless the flow has slowed right down,

The sponges can be gently rinsed in used tank water (never tap water)every month or so or again if the flow slows down.

Carbon sponges have limited usage,once the carbon is used up,they will just act has another sponge,again this only needs replacing if you need to put carbon in the filter if you need to remove meds after treating any fish.

Yes you are correct,if you did change the sponges like the manufactures suggest,then you would be cycling every 4-6 wks :rolleyes:

Edit to add -oops didn't see page 3 :blush: :rolleyes: :lol:

Thanks Guys that was really a great help,(although I dod have to read it all twice to sink in)
I don't know what I would do without this forum, what with instruction manuals, LFS and books I am completely overwhelmed with knowledge....and most of the time incorrect.......


Quick post as off to do a water change ammonia seems stable at .25 the last few days, so Yippeeee I think we are at turning point.

And i'm going to leave my filter sponges well alone
 

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