What happened ?

[Ste_J]

Could somebody offer any thoughts on the strange behavior of my water readings.
I have been running my 28ukg for a couple of months now and up untill last week my readings were spot on except for low nitrate 0ppm, then this weekend i noticed a spike in ammonia(0.50ppm) so i added some ammo chips to my eheim and performed a 25% water change. At the same time as the ammonia spike my nitrate had shot up to 20ppm from 0 and nitrite was up to 0.25

Now some 2 days later to my relief i have retested and the levels have dropped to ammonia 0ppm,nitrite 0ppm and nitrate has stayed at 20ppm

The main thing that has got me slightly worried is that nothing has changed in the tank with no new fish etc so i can't even pin point why the change happened so suddenly or if infact if it will happen again.

Any thoughts or advice would be appriciated

Ste

 

[WILDER]

Nothing to worry about, not many fishkeepers will get a reading of 0 for nitrate, 20 in nitrate is good nothing to worry about.

 

[gadazobe]

The was possibly caused by too much excess food not getting eaten. Are all you fish still there - maybe one died and caused the spike.

 

[Ste_J]

All fish present and accounted for although one has ended up being hospitalised due to white spot.
As for the food factor i can't see that being the case as they only get fed every second to third day.

Nitrate levels of 20ppm i believe are also good for my plants but the other readings were getting me worried i retested again last night and everything is stable so i can only presume that it must have been a blip!