Tank Is No Longer Cycled..help Needed

[waterdrop]

Never heard of aqua nova, Novaqua is a common dechlorinator; <a href="http/www.novalek.com/kordon/novaqua/index.htm" target="_blank">http/www.novalek.com/kordon/novaqua/index.htm</a>

City water usually means chloramine as well as chlorine. Novaqua deals with chloramine, but not the resulting ammonia from the splitting of chlorine & ammonia which makes chloramine.

Municipal water companies will increase chlorine & chloramine for many reasons. You need to increase dechlorinator to compensate for this. Knowing as much as you can about your water supplier will help determining when and if you need to increase dechlorinator.

I would try a dechlorinator that deals with chlorine, chloramine, and ammonia. I would also double dose with the dechlorinator, this will harm nothing, and may be a solution to the problem.

A pH of 6.8 shouldn't affect the nitrifying bacteria to any large degree. Even if you miss a water change you should not be seeing any ammonia in a cycled tank, if anything you would have increased nitrate.

I meant Novaqua. Is there a special brand of dechlorinator that I should look for that deals with chlorine, chloramine and ammonia? Some brands of things are better than others, so that is why I ask.

I knew I shouldn't see ammonia in a cycled tank. Especially when nothing out of the ordinary happened to my tank. That is why I have been very confused and frustrated.




OT a bit but something in this post made me curious

Why WOULDNT you ever see ammonia in a cycled tank? Im in the middle of fishless cycling and the general rule is that as long as the ammonia is processed in 12 hours...then its okay. But that would imply that there be an ammonia level at some point in the first place wouldn't it?

I think the difference is that during fishless you supply the large ammonia dose all at once. During the production phase of an aquarium the ammonia sources are many and ammonia is supplied in very small amounts. Overall there is a more steady introduction of ammonia than during fishless, so for example, during 12 hours there might indeed be, say, 3ppm of ammonia produced from respiration, fish waste, plant decomposition and excess fish food. These steady small amounts of ammonia are pulled into the filter and promptly processed by the now large bacterial populations. At any point that you test, there should not be enough overall free ammonia or nitrite to show up on the test.

 

[Angels777]

Thank you Tolak!!!!! I switched my dechlorinator from Novaqua to Prime three days ago as you advised. With the second water change that first day I noticed my ammonia dropping from off the scale to 4. Today the ammonia is reading 0 again and I am soooo happy

I just wished I would have asked this question before my poor cory cats died. I know it was the ammonia spike that killed them. No matter what I did I couldn't get it to go down. I had no idea that there would be such a difference in the type of dechorinators I was using but I do know that from this day forward I will only use Prime. Its hard to believe that my little rasboras survived through all this.

Again, thank you Tolak. Your advice was right on target