Newbie Help Re Ammonia

[weezebegs]

As you all know doing vary large water changes to finish my fish in cycle after adding more fish to my tank.

My Ammonia was high at 1 and dropped to .25 but is moving all over the place.....what do you think is going on

reading for ammonia only....

1.00
.50
.50
.50
.50
.25
.25
.25
.50


nothing has changed in the tank over this eriod of readings

 

[weezebegs]

10 days after starting this post and my ammonia is still at .50 and I am still doing 80% daily water changes.

The temp is constant at 24, I have 0 nitrite and 0 nitrate, my PH is 7.6.

I have 7 fish who are all happy/healthy..touch wood.

I have 1 snail, and 5 plants.....

I just can't seem to get this ammonia down, after WC is drops to .25 or less but the next day it's back to .50 I am only feeding them every other day and am giving them 3 flakes of food crushed between the 7 of them.

every water change i am cleaning the gravel and wiping ornaments and glass to rid any algae etc....


Eergh...I need help, what's going on Guys !!!

 

[weezebegs]

Well today I have done as much as a complete water change as I could without sucking up the fish.

I took everything out ornaments/plants etc and cleaned it and filled it back up.

3 hours later and my Ammonia is at .25

Shall i do a complete gravel clean tomorrow....as in remove the gravel completely and clean it !!!

Ia there a chance that I am doing too many water changes now, I have been doing them daily for over 4 weeks now.

 

[Harlequins]

Do a good gravel vac,but i wouldn't take out your gravel and completely wash it,it may knock your cycle even more... just make sure you push the vac into the gravel all over for a deep clean...

Nope- keep doing the waterchanges.

Whats your reading for ammonia when tested straight from the tap?

Dont go overboard cleaning algae off the glass/ornaments etc,too much cleaning can knock about the stats.

Do you have live plants? are they decaying?

 

[Gvilleguy]

I agree --- could there be trace ammonia in the tap water? My tap water has 0.25 ppm.

 

[weezebegs]

I agree --- could there be trace ammonia in the tap water? My tap water has 0.25 ppm.

Tap water is coming up 0..

I am only feeding my fish every other day at present so the fish are nibbling the plants and causing plant debris which I am cleaning out every day.

Shall I remove a couple of plants I have 5 at the moment or will that interfere with the other readings.

today's reading are

Ammonia .25, nitrate o, nitrite 0

Not going to do a WC today give the tank a day and myself a day off as reading are not too bad

 

[weezebegs]

well haven't done a WC for 36 hours now and the ammonia has stayed at .25 and the nitrate is moving for the first time...inbetween the 0 - 5 so hopefully that is a good sign.

Can I risk leaving the ammonia at .25 for another 24hours before a waterchange to see if I am coming to the end of my cycle

 

[waterdrop]

Well, you've reached 14 days or so and the minimum average might be about 30 days or more, so you might be about half way, but sometimes a cycle can surprise you and finish up as soon as 21 days or so, there's no telling. One thing is sure, you're not there yet as you still have plenty of toxins whenever you test.

It's good that you've seen some better results from more intense gravel-cleaning-water-changing as this shows you how difficult the fish-in work can be to get results. Sometimes the filters are just not quite as tight as we'd like too, with some of them closer to the discount range, but usually that's not much problem in the long run after the bacterial populations get bigger.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[weezebegs]

well now 5 weeks with my fish in cyle and my readings have been static for the last 4 days.

Been doing daily water changes and gravel cleans and this weekend was the first time that I gave my filter a good clean......Yuk.

My reading are still static at

Ammonia .25 Nitrite 0 and nitrate is almost 5 (deff not on the 0)

Do you think that now my readings for Ammonia is static ( i missed a couple of WC to see if it rose up again and it didn't) that I could be almost there and it is safe to do WC perhaps every other day now.