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Cycled tank, heavily planted, but still reading some ammonia (fish flash on occasion)

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philipraposo1982

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4 Feb 2015
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106
75g tank, heavily planted
Co2, ferts, planted plus lighting
Koralia nano 425
Eheim pro 3 2075 filter

I have been having an issue were my fish would random flash in my tank but show no other signs of anything. Been going on for months. I have tried all sorts of things to resolve it with no avail.

Finally it thought more about the nitrogen cycle and if it was possible that ammonia is not being converted to nitrates quick enough and could be irritation to my fish. No deaths though and not flashing all the time either.

Well this afternoon I saw a few fish flashing randomly and decided to check for ammonia nitrites and nitrates. Sure enough I got a reading of .25 or less ammonia. I think I have finally found the cause for my flashing fish.

How can I ensure that my biological filtration is up to snuff? Or is my only option to reduce my stock? Please help.

Ty.

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5 angels sub adults, 40 peppered corys 13 adults and the rest of 3 month olds.

Nitrates read a bit high cause of ei dosing, nitrites 0.

Ph is around 7.4, temp is 77-78, kh and gh are 9-8 respectively.

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That doesn't seem like an excessive fish load - but do check your actual water volume - especially in heavily planted tank ... except is it also possible that oxygen levels get low??? (difficult to measure but look at fish behavior other than the flashing)
Look to your EI as well, is there ammonia/nitrogen addition?
How high are nitrates? just as high ammonia level can affect bacterial activity, so can high nitrate levels (re inhibition of various enzymes by substrate/product etc)

Note that some fish are also sensitive to high nitrate levels (showing signs of irritation or stress behaviours)
 
Is it worth trying to get your KH (and hence also pH) down a bit, to bring your pH below 7? Above 7, more of the NH3/NH4 will exist as NH3, which is even more toxic to fish than NH4. If you can lower the pH, the dynamic equilibrium between NH3 and NH4 will shift towards NH4, which would be a bit safer.

Do you have access to RO water, or do you collect rainwater? I am using rainwater from my water butt, mixed with tapwater to give a KH of about 4°. Both RO and rainwater will be zero KH and GH, so you can work out what proportion to mix the water to give the KH you want. Lowering KH is by far the best way of lowering pH. The fish that you're keeping would be happier in softer water with lower pH.
 
Hi all,
philipraposo1982 said:
heavily planted
Click to expand...
It is really unlikely that you have any ammonia.

If you look a the fish, an indication of ammonia is swollen red gills.
darren636 said:
What dechlorinator do you use?
Click to expand...
I think "darren636" is likely to be right, readings of 0.25ppm ammonia are likely to be because of using a dechlorinator like <"Prime">. It doesn't indicate you have any free NH3/NH4+.

cheers Darrel
 
I was supposed to say similar to Darrel ,
I guess I picked the wrong day to run out of coffee!
 
So I finally figured it out and wanted to share my findings with everyone. Hopefully it can save someone alot of grief.

I'm short the problem was created by spikes in ammonia. This tank is almost 2 years old with the same filter and media. The spikes were caused by excess feeding.

The long.
I had been overfeeding my tank ever since I got into keeping my cherry barbs. I got them small and wanted to growth them out and fast. I would feed loads of food and never thought about how my bio filtration would handle things. Always assuming it wouldn't be an issue. Turns out that it was. Tests at different time showed ammonia readings of less than .25 but more than zero. With my nuetral soft ish water its not very toxic which would explain why it was able to go on all this time with no real deaths.

To verify this was in fact the culprit I did a big water change with prime and stopped feeding for a few days. Sure enough all flashing stopped. Colors popped even more and life was good again.

I have learned that I really don't know much in terms of feeding the "right" amount. It's even harder because I keep so many Cory's and always struggle to determine if I am feeding too much or not enough. With you get fish I always like to dump a ton of food so they can always be full and grow quickly. Seems like I could be doing more harm than good.

I moved on from cherry's and now keep 5 angels in my 75g. I time myself as I feed them. I only feeding once a day for now. I put the timer on for 2 min and feed them only what they can eat in this time.

The scary thing is realizing how this small amount compared to that of which I was feeding before know about the ammonia spikes. I can honestly say I was probably 10-15 times more food before as opposed to now that I time my feeding of my angels.

As for feeding 40 Cory's, its difficult. The timing guideline doesn't work for them. So I only feeding in one part of the tank each time and watching how much they are eating. Also keeping an eye on the smaller younger corys weight. I will use this as measure of how much to feed.

I also ordered eheim substrate pro biomedia to convert one of my mechanical trays to biological as a precaution.

I am just glad I finally found the cause and have corrected it.

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