I have .25 - .5 ammonia in my 3 month old cichlids tank 125 gallon tank

[GrapeGuy]

I have a 125 gallon African cichlids tank with .25 ammonia. My nitrite is 0 and nitrates are getting produced. The tank cycled for a month and then I put fish in 3 months ago. Can anyone tell me why this is. Also my ammonia alert consistently reads 0

 

[sikoko]

How often do you do a wc and how much?

 

[duanes]

You my want to check with your water provider to see if they use Chloramine, or straight Chlorine as a disinfectant.
If they use Chloramine, this will often give a slight Ammonia reading, right after water change,

and realize, depending on how well stocked, or overstocked your tank is,(as many Rift Lake tanks tend be, .....fish are constantly putting out ammonia thru the gills.
If you are overstocked, and your shy on bio-media, it may not be able to keep up with ammonia output so you will get slight ammonia readings. How much filtration are you using?
And are you regularly vacuuming substrate? or over feeding? any left over food, or detritus stuck in or under rock work will be rotting, putting out ammonia.

 

[neutrino]

Any symptoms with your fish? Do you use a chlorine/chloramine treatment?

There are multiple possibilities, but as I understand it, some test kits will read ammonia that's been bound and rendered harmless by some water treatments.

 

[Rocksor]

No need for alarm since Ammonia Alert is not registering toxic harmful ammonia. As mentioned previously, the ammonia test kit is reading bound non-toxic ammonia. It looks like you don't have enough biological media to completely remove the ammonia from the tank. Fish stocking, maintenance, feeding and filtration descriptions will help to see why you don't have 0 total ammonia.

 

[piranhaman00]

Are you using API test kit? I think a 0ppm rating actually looks more like 0.25 on the color chart. I can never get the reading to be completely yellow, always a tint of green.

 

[RD.]

Quite possibly just a false ammonia reading from your test kit, if you are using Seachem Prime as a water conditioner. Salicylate or Nessler based test kits determine the total ammonia by raising the pH of the test solution to 12 or greater. At this high pH all ammonia removal products will breakdown and re-release the ammonia, giving a false ammonia reading. Total ammonia is simply a reading of NH3 (toxic) and NH4+ (non toxic) combined.


According to Seachem, when using their products such as Prime and/or Safe, the ammonia is converted into the Schiff base of an aldehyde (R2C=NH) which is non-toxic.

 

[GrapeGuy]

How often do you do a wc and how much?

I do a 75% water change every week.

 

[GrapeGuy]

Are you using API test kit? I think a 0ppm rating actually looks more like 0.25 on the color chart. I can never get the reading to be completely yellow, always a tint of green.

I am using api liquid test kit.

 

[GrapeGuy]

No need for alarm since Ammonia Alert is not registering toxic harmful ammonia. As mentioned previously, the ammonia test kit is reading bound non-toxic ammonia. It looks like you don't have enough biological media to completely remove the ammonia from the tank. Fish stocking, maintenance, feeding and filtration descriptions will help to see why you don't have 0 total ammonia.

I have 20 juvenile African cichlids in a 125 gallon tank so I don’t think that counts overstocked. Right? I use a fx4 75% wc every week. I feed 2 times a day and the cichlids eat the food in 3 minutes. I have had the tank with fish in it for 3 months. One problem I have is 2 fish appear to have dropsy. Would that have to do with my .25 ammonia?