Way Too Much Ammonia!

[tigerstar]

My 10 Gal. tank is now sitting at 8.0 mg/L for Ammonia. I did a water change and took out 1/3 of the water and am wondering what else I can do? I live in a small town and the only place that is open that carries fish supplies is Wal-Mart. Help Please?

 

[Jabba]

Change more water and keep changing more hourly until it is below 0.5ppm at least ....

You don't mention any kind of filtration, so you could be looking at daily 10 to 15% water changes depending how many fish you have.

 

[Aphotic Phoenix]

Hmm...okay well first of all since you're in the emergency section I'm assuming you have fish in the tank, and since the ammonia is so high it's a pretty good bet that you are no where near cycled.

What kinds of fish do you have in your tank and how many?

Also...what kind of test kit and how old is it? 8 ppm of ammonia is a high enough level to be toxic to both your fish and the bacteria that consumes it.

Next...do you know what your tank water parameters are in comparison to your tap water? I.E. the pH, GH/KH, nitrates etc. This is important because it's perfectly safe to do large water changes to remove the ammonia if your water parameters are similar, but if they are very different you will want to do multiple small water changes over time.

 

[tigerstar]

Tap water sits at a Ph of 7 and an ammonia of 0 mg/L. I just recently got this tank from a Lady in the newspaper. When we got it the bio filter was trashed so we had to get a new one. We do have a filter system and it is the one for this size of tank. We are trying to seperate the fish slowly because there are 13 fish in total in this tank. 12 of them are cichlids and one pleco. The test kit was just bougth about 6 months ago, and it is by Aquarium Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

 

[Aphotic Phoenix]

The test kit should still be good then if it's only 6 months old and a liquid one.

The tank is majorly overstocked...even if most of the first are dwarf species I can imagine that there really isn't much space for them & it's going to be really difficult to keep ammonia levels under control. Not to mention there are very few cichlid species that are appropriate for a 10 gallon tank. If you have any spare equipment available (like an airstone and heater) I'd recommend finding / purchasing the largest clean (chemical free) rubber / plastic bin you can find and setting it up as temporary housing for some of them (cheaper than a new tank). You'll most likely need to be testing and changing the water at least twice a day to keep the ammonia levels under control.

 

[tigerstar]

It mentions in my little pamphlit that comes with my ammonia tester kit that you can use Ammo-Lock to instantly lock up ammonia. It says that it will convert the harmful ammonia to good ammonia and protect the fish? Is this a good idea to go and get if I can find it?

 

[tigerstar]

Well I'm off to get the stuff now. I know that this is not a long time solution but I am hoping that this one time dose will help until i can get it all under control and good. I will post again when I get home and see if there is anything new posted here. Thanks for now!

 

[Musho3210]

it will help the fish yes, but dont take it as the magical cure....

 

[tigerstar]

it will help the fish yes, but dont take it as the magical cure....

I'm not going to. What I plan on doing is using this to get it under control right away and start doing 15% - 25% Water changes once a day. I'm home sick from school and work so I guess this all works out for the better. Good news is that when I started this all the water was really cloudy and now it is crystal clear.