# ************ ammonia?!



## pyewacketsid (Apr 4, 2011)

Okay, I thought my tank finished cycling about 6 weeks ago. It was established in March.

It's been 2 weeks since I did a water change, and as I was preparing the siphon hose, my 8yo asked if we could test the water first. "Sure," I said, not thinking there would be much to see.

Well, thank goodness for scientifically curious children. The ammonia was at 2ppm!  I have no idea why.

Specs: 29 gallon, 2 AC30 power filters, 5 danios, 5 neons, 4 cories, and a guppy. At this moment, I can't believe they're all still swimming, poor things.

I've never yet rinsed out the filters, but I pulled the media baskets up, and they don't look at all clogged or even particularly dirty. I have the sponge, a bag of charcoal, and a bag of bio beads in each of them.

In the last 2 weeks, I have started feeding more (due to the "am I under-feeding" thread).

I have some sword plants and floating hornwort, and a few of the sword leaves are dying off (I assume due to snails and/or insufficient light).

What do you think is causing the ammonia?

I did a 50% water change. Tomorrow I'll test again and do another change if necessary. I'm really bewildered -- I THINK I have more-than-adequate filtration and an under-stocked tank, don't I?


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

Ammonia will go up when there is suddenly more decaying stuff. Increased feeding, dying plants, dead fish, dead snails, etc. It should go back down in a day or two as your bacteria multiply to keep up. Unless, and this is a big one, the ammonia level got high enough to kill off your filter bacteria. Then you may have to 're-cycle' the tank. Usually when I hear about an established tank crashing like this, it was pet-sit and overfed. But it can happen when a plant rots, copper kills all your snails at once, a guest feeds your fish without telling you (watch kids and old folks), plant food was full of 'nitrogen' etc. If something can go wrong it will.

The other possibility is decaying stuff stayed the same but your bio-filter took a hit. Medications, power-failures, clogged intake tubes, tap water changed pH. Again, anything that could go wrong.

Do check the water's color. Yellow water from driftwood will something show as a false positive in a color test.

You may never know the cause, but you know the drill. Keep the levels down with water change and pretend its a new tank. Cut back on feeding and so on.


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## Fishy Freak (Jun 1, 2011)

Also have you added any fish recently?
I would guess the decaying plants and extra feeding are the cause.


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## pyewacketsid (Apr 4, 2011)

Thanks guys. I'll cut back on feeding and be more pro-active in pruning. We did have a few 3-hour power failures 2 weeks ago -- it didn't occur to me that this could kill off bacteria. Maybe it was just a trifecta. 

Off to test the water!


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## RobertTheFish (Jul 14, 2011)

If power failures are regular in your area you may want to look into a UPS for your filtration and aeration.


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