You should have nitrite reading when it starts. Ammonia breaks down to nitrite and nitrite to nitrate.
Sudden ammonia spike in 75 gallon tank.
- Thread starter rajpradeep32@gmail.com
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The facts that Arowana is eating and reduction in ammonia levels are good signs.
From my experience , Arowana is a very hardy fish and they survive in harsh extreme conditions. However they dont cope with sudden changes to water conditions . Which means they will survive in dirty waters presumably for long periods, but suddenly if we change 70% water with fresh new water it may turn catastrophic for them. So its always better to do gradual changes in their environment . PH and Ammonia are main factors Arowana gets stressed and stop eating.
Particularly with canisters they get clogged with waste faster and they stay in the 'system' unless its removed by Cleaning the media. So its better to clean it more often.
Some things to avoid a drastic change:
From my experience , Arowana is a very hardy fish and they survive in harsh extreme conditions. However they dont cope with sudden changes to water conditions . Which means they will survive in dirty waters presumably for long periods, but suddenly if we change 70% water with fresh new water it may turn catastrophic for them. So its always better to do gradual changes in their environment . PH and Ammonia are main factors Arowana gets stressed and stop eating.
Particularly with canisters they get clogged with waste faster and they stay in the 'system' unless its removed by Cleaning the media. So its better to clean it more often.
Some things to avoid a drastic change:
- Dont clean all your filters at once. Clean one canister and the second one at different schedules.
- Always rinse media in tank water
- Reduce water change volume when doing filter media cleaning
- Do periodic water changes and maintenance on regular schedule. Limit water change to 50% on a weekly schedule.
- Check water parametrs regularly
Hello; I do two or three fasting days each week as a normal thing. You might want to do even more until the bb (beneficial bacteria) get their numbers back up.
Hello; This has to be one of the best comments ever and so very true.
Hello; yes to this, You likely wiped out a large number of the bb but not all. They will come back in time. However as they are slow to reproduce compared to other bacteria it takes some time. Some bacteria can reproduce in 20 minutes while bb can take seven hours.
Hello; I do not think it was ever stopped based on your description of how you cleaned the tank. So there is still an established population of the bb in the tank but that population is so much smaller that before and there are not yet enough regrown to handle all the ammonia. More the tank is out of balance for a time. Lots of small WC to keep the ammonia levels down for a while.
Hello; I go along with most of this except the rinse dirty media and then re-use it. To be more clear it depends on which type of media we are talking about. There often are two types of media in a filter system.
One type is meant to trap the poo and other tank crud. This is often some sort of floss or foam like material. I toss this stuff out and replace it with new. I don't toss all the filter floss at the same time. I toss and replace one portion at one time and then another portion a week or few later.
The other type of media is not meant to trap crud although it can get loaded up with the detritus and mulm. This media (bio media) is just some sort of solid material whose purpose is to give the sticky film of the bb a place to attach to. The notion is the floss traps the crud and then later the clean water passes over his "bio-media" where the bb live in a sticky film. This is where the bb take in the ammonia and nitrites and convert it to the less harmful nitrates. When this sort of media gets clogged up the yes give it a good rinse in tank water and reuse it.
toss the floss and keep the bio media.
Hello; While the chemicals you name likely will not do harm I do not think they are needed. Do more often WC for a time to keep the ammonia and nitrites diluted and reduce feeding to slow down the metabolic waste from the fish. It will just take some time for the slow to reproduce bb to get back into a balanced population.
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Ammonia is at 0.25ppm, nitrite 0ppm, nitrate still at 40ppm... I did a 20% water change today and I think that is diluting the ammonia, not sure whether BB is helping out in this. PH is at 6.6 and I am using reverse osmosis water, I think the ocean free black water which I used has reduced the ph, I used it one day alone and also half the prescribed amount.
Why you wanna reduce the ph? Low ph and low kh of the water makes the ph drop even more and is deadly for all fishes. Always keep an stable ph in your water. When changing water your nitrate should come down to. Something is not right in your tank. Look for anything in your tank that might be hidden and is ****ing your water up. Change 30% once a day until you have 0 ammonia 0 nitrite and keep your nitrate at 10ppm at tops. How many litres is the tank and how many cm is the fish? Whats your filtration?
On my 700L tank with one 25cm ray, one 17cm albino gibbiceps and one 15cm fei feng i have an eheim 2260 (1500xl) and fx5 and one trickle filter with 70L biomedia running 10000L/h trough it for filtration an i change maybe 40% water at least twice a week to keep up with my heavy feeding and the fishes excrements polluting the water
I didnt want to lower the ph, since the ammonia level was almost at 2ppm yesterday, I used ocean free black water which had stated as " reduces stress in fresh and creates a good environment" maybe that could have lowered the ph, well I am not going to use it again, the ro water which I have ph as 7.0 directly out of the ro filter.
Tank capacity is 70 gallons, I have filled upto 55 gallons. Using two eheim 2217 filters.
Albino silver aro (between 12 to 14 cms) still staying at bottom and then swims throughout the entire tank once in maybe 5 mins, not showing any darting or stressful effect whilr swimming though but the majority of the time keeps resting at the bottom, I think the 0.25ppm still is bothering it along with 40ppm nitrate, Planning to do another 20-30% water change tomorrow, cuz am adding seachem stability BB I want the bacteria to get established, just thinking whether frequent water changes will bother the cycle formation.
Yeah both ammonia and nitrate i bothering it. 40ppm is high. What media do you have in your filters? Do you use the package included with the filter? You need to have some biomedia to. I keep my 2260 filled with bioballs roughly 25L balls and my fx5 is filled with mechanical media like spunges and floss. The best you can do now is to not feed for some days. 2-4 days maybe and change 30% every day. And dont mix with the ph any more. Thats not good. Always keep ph and kh at a stable level.
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Yes for biomedia am using the eheim substrate pro which came along with 2217 filter and also I have put 6 to 8 small marinepure balls, this is the set up in both 2217 filters.
Well then you dont have worry about that yet. As said keep doing waterchanges about 30% and monitor your parimiters. Keep notes from day to day. Measure ph, kh, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate and keep us updated
