I thought I had a small water issue last week. I'll recap. ph 6.0, ammonia 1-2, nitrate 40, nitrite 0. I did a 50% water change and the ammonia dropped to .25-.5, nitrate dropped to 10 and the ph went up to 6.4. I just checked the water again and the ammonia is back up at 1, nitrate is still low at 5, no nitrite and the ph is back down to 6.0. Whats going on here? I haven't put any more veggies in the tank and I haven't overfed. I'm at a loss here. I'm going to do another water change today, but I wnat to rectify the problem so I don't worry as much about the crappy conditions my fish are in. Please help.

If its the 55g your having the trouble with I'm guessing its going to be a filter volume problem as well as some mad overcrowding from the kribs depending on just how many fry you have swimming round right now. The only fixes for this I can think of are increasing your filter size without necessarily upping flow rates and/or moving some of the stock to another tank. Come to think of it, it could also be a low oxygen to CO2 ratio seeing as the pH is dropping as well as the ammonia is rising. Turn on venturi's or add some airstones to churn the water up a bit near your filters, might help balance things a bit better. The real trick though is getting rid of the ammonia reading before you get the pH to rise because free ammonia is more likely to be the not as toxic ammonium in acidic water.

i tend to agree with monkeh that it is down to your filtration not being capable of dealing with the amount of waste being produced in the tank how many of your plecs are still in this tank ? dont forget plecs are s**t factorys

I'm not having such a problem with the 50 gallon, but the 29 gallon is kicking my arse. I did lose my L81 last night. The ammonia in the 50 gallon hasn't gone up and is at .25. The nitrates are higher than I'd like at 60, the nitrite is 0 and the ph is still 6.0. So I have to do another water change. The 29 gallon on the other hand is ridiculous. Ammonia 1.0, nitrate 5, nitrite 0, ph 6.0. I'm having some serious issues with my tanks as of last week. I tore the 29 gallon apart to try and find anything causing the problem. I did a 6 gallon water change. The panda corys now have fungus, so I have to treat for that which I'm using pimafix and melafix.

You could always try adding some ammolock as well, see if it helps to de-toxify the ammonia for you while you figure whats causing it. The only other things I can think about asking for are how long has the tank been running and whats filtering it?

I think a lot of time in smaller tanks with messier fish it doesn't do any harm to go a bit overboard on the filters, water flow can be deflected or baffled but once your filter bacteria max out if they can't deal with everything instantly its going to build up and cause problems.

The tank has been running since February. There is a penguin 330 bio-wheel filtering it along with an undergravel filter with an 802 powerhead and an airstone & pump.

you have a problem what we need to know have you caused the problem ?you know when you last did a water change did you clean your fillter ? & if so how so ?how long has the tank in question been up & running ? have you introduced any thing new ?

I think Monkeh's on the right track with the Ammolock (it's AmmoGen here). Cut the Nitrogen Cycle right back at the beginning.

You're doing good with your water change, but step it up. Take a leaf from the Gospel according to Clunkster: Healthy Water = Healthy Fish.

Ok, you don't know what it is... But it gets to the fish only one way. I'd be looking at as close to 50% water change as possible, with preperation for the same again an a couple of days time. I have one of those light-industrial buckets 45 litres. Have a bucket aerating to dissipate chlorine.

Vacuum the crap out of your gravel. Check your filter system. Be wary of combining filter cleans with a huge water change. Always rinse and clean in tank water. Pretreating fresh water, and using Ammo-whatever reduces the impact on your bio-filter. You can artificially reseed your filter medium however.

If you think it's purely an imbalance in your water parameters, and no Disease or such involved, consider moving fish temporarily to another tank, and give this tank a real going over. Reintroduce gradually when done.

I added carbon and zeolite last night. Did a 3 gallon water change. Tested the tap water to see if something was amiss there and it turned out ok. My L90 and my 2 panda corys died yesterday. I have already vacuumed the crap out of my gravel. I took out all the plants and the wood to see if something was there. I cleaned underneath all of the wood and the plants. This tank has been setup since Feb. 2006. I try not to clean the filter at the same time I do a water change. I have not introduced anything new for about a month. I usually wash the filter media in tap water and have never had a problem before. I'm ready to tear my hair out! It really puts me in a bad mood when the fish die.

My wife doesn't like to see our fish die either, so last night we went and got a stand and sand for the 135 gallon. Tonight or tomorrow we will get an Emperor 400 HOB filter, (3) 501 powerheads and a heater. I looked at the heater that is on my 50 gallon and it is 300W. I'm going to use that heater in the 135 gallon and get a 200W heater for the 50 gallon. I'm taking the 802 powerhead out of the 50 gallon and out of the 29 gallon and using them on the 135 gallon along with a 501. The 301 powerhead is going in the 29 gallon and the 50 gallon is getting (2) 501 powerheads. I will hopefully have it up and running this weekend.

We're getting in the right direction, but for now the zeolite and carbon will probably be sorting things short term for you and these problems may return again in the future. I apologise for not asking about the UG setup earlier but I've been tired this week with a new baby arriving sunday and it never really crossed my mind until this morning.

I'm guessing the tanks a 30x18x12 (LxHxD) and until today had an aquaclear 802 on one uplift and airstone on the other - this might have been part of the problem tbh with a huge imbalance of flows and sheer power of the 802 it could be possible the powerhead was pulling water more through the other uplift rather than the gravel itself and now its been replaced with a 301. What I'd do now is replace the airstone with another 301. This should make sure all the gravel in the tank has flow through it instead of giving a mechanical water pump an easier flow route option against the airstones friction through an open tube than the denser gravel. Under normal circumstances if I was running an UG filter on a tank longer than 24" I always opt for 2 powerheads or one for roughly every 18" of base they have to cover.

I was doing some research and found a couple of things. Tell me what you think.
Both tanks have 0 kh and 75 gh. The low kh makes the ph unstable. The low ph compromises the nitrifying bacteria, thus the rise in ammonia. So if I raise the kh, the ph should rise aiding in the survival of the nitrifying bacteria, lowering the ammonia. I also found out that Chloramine-T is more toxic at low pH, while potassium permanganate is more dangerous at high pH

I never realised your kh was so low.

I don't remember the Potassium bit, but the rest sounds right. We were discussing pH crash with CO2 diffusion, a couple of months back.

But what's different in your other tanks to prevent it? Surely you've got a low kh in all tanks. Just because this one is recently cycled, I wouldn't have thought that was a factor.


I thought that Baby of yours was already due, Monkeh?

I added the buffer last night and the kh went up to 40-80 and the ph went up to 7.0-7.2. WAY faster than I wanted. This morning everybody looked good. Swimming around and eating. I feel much better now. Thanks for all of the help.

keep an eye on your remaining fish as a change in your ph can affect them if it is a drastic one sorry to hear you lost some more fish it sounds as though your having a bad time what you need to work out if you can is what caused your problems this is one of the reasons i carry out water tests every week so i can keep an eye on ph,gh,kh as well as nitrates,nitrites & ammonia as any change in any of them can & will affect your water unfortunatly it has affected your tank with devastating effect i also think your tank has gone into a cycle again which could cause you some of the problems you have encounted as i notice you have washed your fillter sponge in untreated tapwater the reason you treat tapwater is so you DONT KILL off the bacterial colony that exists on the sponge this should only be washed in tapwater also i dont think the tank has been up & running long enough to actually class it as an established tank so you could also have a case of new tank syndrome i see you are planning on getting the 135 gal up & running if i was you i would do a 50% water change on your other tanks & use this in the 135 gal & then top it up with treated water i would also use some of the gravel from your existing tanks this will help seed the new fillters

I thought for sure I would have some dead fish this morning. I aerated the water the best I could and I left the light off on the 50 gallon yesterday and today to ease the stress on the fish. I didn't find one dead fish this morning.

I have the sand for the 135 gallon and I'm going to use alot of the gravel to mix in to the sand for the live plants and to seed the tank with bacteria. I do weekly water tests and it didn't look like anything was out of place at first. My fish started acting weird and I took what action I could at the time. I'm now more knowledgeable about water chemistry. I'm a person that needs to do things the hard way to fully understand them. As much as I hate losing fish, this was a very important lesson for me. I will now pay CLOSE attention to my water. I don't think washing the filter in tapwater is what caused my problem. I think it was leaving the veggies in too long.