Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping Help and Advice => The Emergency Room => Topic started by: susie58 on August 11, 2014, 05:44:18 PM
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Hi
I have an ammonia reading of 4.0 ppm in my 21 ltre tank with a male betta, 2 rosy tetras, 3 ghost shrimp and an assassin snail.
I've had the tank since April and it has been stable for a few weeks now but yesterday I did a routine water check and the nitrates were up to 20ppm. One of the rosy tetras had died so I did a 50% water change and hoped for the best.
When I tested the water again I discovered the ammonia spike. The only thing I can think of that is new to the tank are 2 moss balls which I bought from Amazon - could this be the cause?
I have removed all of the plants except 1, done a 20% water change, cleaned the filter sponge (in the water from the tank).
My betta is looking a bit out of sorts but the other fish look ok at the moment. I will check the water again in the morning and do another water change depending on the levels.
Any idea what would cause this to happen? The tank has been stable for at least 6 weeks now.
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have you done anything to the filter recently prior to the clean you mentioned , it sounds like for some reason you have lost your ammonia eating bacteria, i would seem that you are now doing a fish in cycle.
4 ppm is far to high if it is indeed 4.0 ppm you need to take as much water from the tank as you can and add new water , make sure the new water is at the same temperature as the water your removing, then retest again, you need to get the ammonia level back to .25ppm or even better 0ppm and keep repeating this process every time you get a reading higher than these levels.
As for the moss balls i am fairly sure that they could not raise the ammonia levels on themselves (althow iam willing to stand corrected on this ) but i suppose it is possible there was some sort of contamination on them that killed your bacteria and as for removing all your plants it may be a idea to pop them back in or at least a few of them as i understand it plants use ammonia so they can help you to keep the ammonia levels in check while you rebuild your bacteria colony.
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the ammonia spike could have been because of the dead rosy tetra.
i would keep n doing regular 25% water changes daily to try and keep things in check.