Sudden ammonia spike in 75 gallon tank.

[rajpradeep32@gmail.com]

Guys, I am having a 75gallon tank with 2 eheim 2217 filters, only one albino silver aro '12inches' is present in it, the tank was cycled and had only nitrates at 20-30ppm range earlier.

I didnt clean the eheim filters for almost 6 months and now even after cleaning and rinsing the media in both the filters, am observing sudden ammonia hike of upto 4ppm, the albino aro was staying the bottom and suddenly moved to the top due to lack of oxygen.

I am very worried how extensive the damage could be for the aro .

Since I dont have a spare tank, first I treated the tank with epsom salt, 5gms for 5 gallons for 2 days then I removed 90% of the water and filled in new water upto 40 gallons, now the ammonia has reduced to 2ppm which I know still is dangerous.

I have added seachem stability and oceanfree black water now, now aro has moved from top hovering to the bottom, still doesnt show much appetite, ate few dried shrimps today.

Guys, pls advice
How I can establish the nitrogen cycle fast, also will seachem stabiltiy help to quicken the process?

Should I be changing 20% water even when seachem stability is added?

I am also going to buy prime can stability be used with prime?

 

[Tobiassorensen]

Did you rinse both filters at the same time? Did you rinse them completely clean? Did you do it in tapwater? If yes on all question then there is your answer on why it spikes on ammonia. Keep the feeding minimal maybe skip a couple of days and change small amount of water every day until it reads 0 again. Do you have an already established tank you can take some media from to kickstart the nitrifyingprocess with if so do it right away. An albino silver arowana at least here in sweden is expencive as hell so id not wanna lose it.

 

[duanes]

Cleaning filters once every 6 months is kind of like sweeping dog sh't under a rug for 6months.
If its in a filter, its still in the tank water, you just can't see it.
Then doing a heavy cleaning will wipe out the population of beneficial bacteria, that are already compromised by the buildup of smothering sh't.
Better to clean more often (much more often), and shake media out in tank water, leaving enough biofilm to not upset the cycle.

 

[rajpradeep32@gmail.com]

Did you rinse both filters at the same time? Did you rinse them completely clean? Did you do it in tapwater? If yes on all question then there is your answer on why it spikes on ammonia. Keep the feeding minimal maybe skip a couple of days and change small amount of water every day until it reads 0 again. Do you have an already established tank you can take some media from to kickstart the nitrifyingprocess with if so do it right away. An albino silver arowana at least here in sweden is expencive as hell so id not wanna lose it.

No, I only used water from the same tank to rinse the filter pads, marine pure and eheim substrate pro, but rinsed items in both the filter at once.
Yes, I have put few balls of marine pure in the arowana tank, which I had in a 20 gallon tank.
With seachem stability I am planning to do the dosage as mentioned in it for 7 days, but can I change 20-30% water during these days?? What about seachem prime can I use it??

 

[rajpradeep32@gmail.com]

Cleaning filters once every 6 months is kind of like sweeping dog sh't under a rug for 6months.
If its in a filter, its still in the tank water, you just can't see it.
Then doing a heavy cleaning will wipe out the population of beneficial bacteria, that are already compromised by the buildup of smothering sh't.
Better to clean more often (much more often), and shake media out in tank water, leaving enough biofilm to not upset the cycle.

Yea, I shoukd have been more proactive, I used the aquarium water to rinse the pads but poured the dirty water out, maybe I should have poured someback in the tank itself, learning a hard lesson now, quite worried about the gills burn which the aro is getting sufficated with now

 

[esoxlucius]

It looks to me like you were maybe a little rigorous in your filter pad cleaning and you've got rid of a shed load of your BB. It's a relatively small tank for a 12" fish so as soon as your aro starts excreting its waste after your filter clean, then the ammonia spike is inevitable, and that's exactly what you're getting now. You should have staggered the cleaning really rather than do them both at the same time.

However i'm betting that there's still some BB left in your pads and it shouldn't take them too long to get back up to speed. In the meantime, if your aro is struggling that much you need to get that ammonia down fast. 4ppm down to 2ppm is a good start, though obviously you've still got more work to do. I'd carry on with the water changes until it's at 0ppm. Maybe miss a feeding or two as well. Hopefully the few colonies of BB you have left can manage the minimal waste output from the aro instead of spiking again.

 

[duanes]

One of the biggest detriments I see with the use of canister filters is that they are non-user friendly to clean, so tend to sit and build up gunk, because the ability to make a tank look clean, (aesthetically) but hide a host of chemical concentration problems. These in the end, produce chromic diseases like hole in the head, especially in large, long lived fish.

 

[rajpradeep32@gmail.com]

It looks to me like you were maybe a little rigorous in your filter pad cleaning and you've got rid of a shed load of your BB. It's a relatively small tank for a 12" fish so as soon as your aro starts excreting its waste after your filter clean, then the ammonia spike is inevitable, and that's exactly what you're getting now. You should have staggered the cleaning really rather than do them both at the same time.

However i'm betting that there's still some BB left in your pads and it shouldn't take them too long to get back up to speed. In the meantime, if your aro is struggling that much you need to get that ammonia down fast. 4ppm down to 2ppm is a good start, though obviously you've still got more work to do. I'd carry on with the water changes until it's at 0ppm. Maybe miss a feeding or two as well. Hopefully the few colonies of BB you have left can manage the minimal waste output from the aro instead of spiking again.

Now I have been increasing the water level from 150litres to almost 200litres and ammonia is at 1ppm now... Will keep increasing the water level and will use stability for bb growth, hoping this would help me.

 

[Tobiassorensen]

Now I have been increasing the water level from 150litres to almost 200litres and ammonia is at 1ppm now... Will keep increasing the water level and will use stability for bb growth, hoping this would help me.

Fill the tank upp as much as possible test the water and keep note on the readings wait until tomorrow and change 30% water and take a new test and keep doing that until you have 0 ammonia and 0 nitrite then keep the nitrate readings below 10ppm with water changes

 

[rajpradeep32@gmail.com]

Fill the tank upp as much as possible test the water and keep note on the readings wait until tomorrow and change 30% water and take a new test and keep doing that until you have 0 ammonia and 0 nitrite then keep the nitrate readings below 10ppm with water changes

Latest readings are ammonia 0.50ppm, nitrite 0ppm, nitrate 40ppm. Has the nitrogen cycle started??