Ammonia still in water after cycling

[TheTerminutter]

75 gallon
Fx6 filter
One 5 inch ranchu goldfish

I put biomedia from a cycled filter to the fx6, running it for 14 days in the cycled tank.
I moved the fx6 to the 75 gallon.
After 7 days i tested the parameters before a water change.

Ammonia: .25 ppm
The tap water had 0 ammonia.

I admit ive been feeding my goldfish a lot, but it's probably a fraction of what an overstocked 75 gallon african cichlid tank gets fed in a week.
I estimate that I fed him a handful of vegetable matter, 3 earth worms and 3 small handfuls of goldfish pellets in a week.

I ordered a bottle of Dr Tim's one and only to seed some more bacteria.

Am i feeding him too much? Will the fx6 be able to house more bacteria for me to get Daisy another friend, or does he really poop so much that he overwhelms an fx6 in a 75 gallon?

 

[duanes]

You may be overfeeding.
Although 0.25 is not too out of wack
When you say hand fulls, what does that mean?
To me a handful might be a half cup measured.
and to me that's too much for 1 goldfish, a tsp should be plenty.
And are you sure its all getting eaten, if some of it is laying on the bottom rotting, thats an ammonia factory in the making.

It may also be that the filter has not grown a large enough population of bacteria to handle that glut of ammonia from food and feces yet.

 

[TheTerminutter]

You may be overfeeding.
Although 0.25 is not too out of wack
When you say hand fulls, what does that mean?
To me a handful might be a half cup measured.
and to me that's too much for 1 goldfish, a tsp should be plenty.
And are you sure its all getting eaten, if some of it is laying on the bottom rotting, thats an ammonia factory in the making.

It may also be that the filter has not grown a large enough population of bacteria to handle that glut of ammonia from food and feces yet.

Oh right, I forgot not everyone's got small, stubby hands like me. A small handful to me is about 1-1/2 tablespoons.
I assume that he eats everything, but now that I think of it some may have gotten lost in the sand, stuck under decoration or sucked up the filter.

I'm gonna start feeding him less and check ammonia levels a week after I pour in dr tims.

 

[Azedenkae]

75 gallon
Fx6 filter
One 5 inch ranchu goldfish

I put biomedia from a cycled filter to the fx6, running it for 14 days in the cycled tank.
I moved the fx6 to the 75 gallon.
After 7 days i tested the parameters before a water change.

Ammonia: .25 ppm
The tap water had 0 ammonia.

I admit ive been feeding my goldfish a lot, but it's probably a fraction of what an overstocked 75 gallon african cichlid tank gets fed in a week.
I estimate that I fed him a handful of vegetable matter, 3 earth worms and 3 small handfuls of goldfish pellets in a week.

I ordered a bottle of Dr Tim's one and only to seed some more bacteria.

Am i feeding him too much? Will the fx6 be able to house more bacteria for me to get Daisy another friend, or does he really poop so much that he overwhelms an fx6 in a 75 gallon?

It is very common for the API test kit to register 0.25ppm ammonia even though it is effectively zero. Since it was a while before you did a water change and it just registers 0.25ppm, yeah I'd consider it a false positive reading and treat it effectively as zero.

 

[jjohnwm]

Moving a mature filter into a new tank to create an "instant cycle" works like a charm...but it isn't magic. The filter contains a bacterial population that handles the ammonia produced by the fish that were in the tank it originally came from. If it were one of two or three filters in that tank, then the one you take out contains about 1/2 or 1/3 of the required bacteria for that bioload. Now, by my standards, you may as well have been feeding this single goldfish with a shovel; so unless the filter came from a tank that was similarly overfed or perhaps more heavily populated, it takes a few days for the bacterial population to increase and catch up to the new, higher ammonia production.

But it will catch up. That single filter, filled with suitable biomedia, could definitely support the required population; it just wouldn't necessarily have that many right away, based upon the difference in bioloads in the two tanks.

By the way...ammonia, bacteria and filtration aside...you do know that fish can overeat and become fat and unhealthy...right?

 

[TheTerminutter]

Moving a mature filter into a new tank to create an "instant cycle" works like a charm...but it isn't magic. The filter contains a bacterial population that handles the ammonia produced by the fish that were in the tank it originally came from. If it were one of two or three filters in that tank, then the one you take out contains about 1/2 or 1/3 of the required bacteria for that bioload. Now, by my standards, you may as well have been feeding this single goldfish with a shovel; so unless the filter came from a tank that was similarly overfed or perhaps more heavily populated, it takes a few days for the bacterial population to increase and catch up to the new, higher ammonia production.

But it will catch up. That single filter, filled with suitable biomedia, could definitely support the required population; it just wouldn't necessarily have that many right away, based upon the difference in bioloads in the two tanks.

By the way...ammonia, bacteria and filtration aside...you do know that fish can overeat and become fat and unhealthy...right?

Yeah, I've definitely not have been keeping track of how much I've been feeding my carp. Even I was a little shaken when I sat down and actually calculated how much food I would have given him during the whole week. I guess it's just a subconscious overreaction to that time I was 11 and I bureaucratically followed the "only feed the size of an eye" rule and ended up starving my betta painfully slowly. He was totally emaciated, but I ignored the signs because of the rule.
This time i will not ignore the signs from the declining water quality and feed Daisy less. Much less.

 

[Cal Amari]

you could add some bottom feeders to help clean up excess food, such as snails or small catfish like pictus or cories.

 

[TheTerminutter]

you could add some bottom feeders to help clean up excess food, such as snails or small catfish like pictus or cories.

Carp are bottom feeders though, and he does a great job of keeping the floor itself spick and span. The main problem is food getting stuck in the filter and under decorations, so I decided to get a clip for the veggies. The green stuff get EVERYWHERE.

 

[Trouser Cough]

I know this probably sounds odd but the reagent dye for NH3 appears different to my eye than it does to my wife's eye. I test each of my tanks on the weekend and it is common for me to think that the color of the reagent in the tube matches the .25 sample on the chart. When I show the same sample to my wife she says there's no yellow in the tube at all.

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that we're not the only ones that sense that color a little differently than API had hoped. Truth be told though there aren't a lot of other color options they can choose from.

 

[Fishman Dave]

Wouldn’t it be good if they could come up with something more like the marine test kits that you add reagent 1 to which turns it blue and then add reagent 2 till it goes red and then measure on a scale. But again , these aren’t for ph or ammonia.