Ammonia

[Cliff]

can someone help me with an ammonia problem? I have a Discus tank. I did a water change 3 days ago and tested the water as it had gone a darkish brown red colour, the drift wood has previously leached but not done so for a long time.

After testing I saw that the water had a 2.4mg/L ammonia and there is nitrite present also.

I bought a pack of AMMO FREE 450 and put the whole thing into my 4ft tank, that was 1 1/2 days ago and i havn't noticed any change, I'm concernd about loosing my discus.

[sammigold]

Have you done another water change... (maybe check the water you are putting in first to see what sort of parameters that has)

I find it strange that wood would start leeching after it has not done so for a long time... have you added any new wood or other items to the tank.

Regular water changes is what is required to bring your ammonia levels down as quickly as possible.

How long was it between water changes.... I was just reading today that if you do a water change after a long period of time and the ph of your new water is higher it can turn what was previously harmless ammonium into toxic ammonia... due to the higher ph freeing up the ions in the water or some such and this can be drastic... here is a link...
http://groups.msn.com/Breathingeasierwithgills/whatisph.msnw

hth.

[samir]

get some sera nitrivec and seachem prime. prime will detoxify the ammonia and nitrite and the nitrivec will repopulate the biofilter. acidic ph is safer like Sammi said,
maybe the driftwood sent your ph down too low and your biofilter took a knock.

[Merrilyn]

Welcome to the forum Cliff. If this tank has been set up for some time, then your bio filter has suffered some kind of breakdown and your essential bacteria colony has died.

Your tank is going through a cycle, and this is very dangerous for your fish. You will need to do daily waterchanges to keep the ammonia levels low. Adding a product like Seachem Prime at each waterchange, will help to neutralize the toxic effect of the ammonia, while your tank is cycling.

If you have a friend with a cycled tank, you could ask him for some used filter media to put into your tank, to help speed up the cycle process.

There are several articles on this forum about cycling a tank. Read through them to be sure you understand the process.

[Cliff]

Thanks for the tips, I wanted to do some more changes to rid the tank of some of the ammonia but have also herd not to change the water too often?? I still think I need to get that ammonia out of there. Perhaps my bio filter has crashed? I did do a couple of steps of ph up as it was below 6 and wanted to bring it up to 6.5, when tested I overshot and went up to 6.8. As suggested by sammi's link perhaps the ph up caused the unharmful ammonium to change to harmful ammonia. Might try the daily 10% water changes over the next couple of days..

[taksan]

Thanks for the tips, I wanted to do some more changes to rid the tank of some of the ammonia but have also herd not to change the water too often?? I still think I need to get that ammonia out of there. Perhaps my bio filter has crashed? I did do a couple of steps of ph up as it was below 6 and wanted to bring it up to 6.5, when tested I overshot and went up to 6.8. As suggested by sammi's link perhaps the ph up caused the unharmful ammonium to change to harmful ammonia. Might try the daily 10% water changes over the next couple of days..


Try 50% daily Water changes ..... :shock:

[Del]

Try 50% daily Water changes .....

I wonder why we are all under the impression that large waterchanges are bad for discus... I was told never to do more than 40% until last week, myself!

DEL

[sammigold]

Yeah, I was always told not to do huge waterchanges on any tanks.... but I think I am starting to understand things a little more now....

that info is correct if you do infrequent water changes...I have seen some keepers mention they only do changes once a month [shock! horror! to alot of us but the norm to them]... I would assume that then you would only want to keep those changes small so as not to drastically alter conditions in the tank

and I suppose a huge water change to get rid of toxins is better than leaving those toxins in there...

I know that I saved about 40 guppies I had by doing 3 x 50% w/c (thats like 150% water change) in one day due to a nitrite spike as my KH moved up drastically and I see now that that would have altered my ph and thereby caused ammonia/nitrite spike.....

at the time I didnt understand what may have caused it but my instinct was to just keep changing the water.
I just kept changing until they stopped looking so gaspy and the parameters were back to "normal". The following morning they were back to normal and I only lost 2 guppies (I thought at one stage I was going to lose the whole tank!)

(god I can rabbit on cant I?)

[samir]

a large water change after a long time will knock your discus about. In your case a large slow water change is better than having high ammonia.