58 replies to this topic

[Krystal]

Remember this? http://www.perthcich...x...st&p=113739

Those two plastic inserts are just Carbon with a small amount of poly fibre wrapped around it....in other words, it does absolutely nothing in terms of biological filtration. Replace them with sponges or something along those lines....utilise the full volume of the filter. Unfortunately they try and cut costs by not providing the right media, they also have major after sales because people will buy replacement cartridges every 4-6 weeks as specified.

[Donna]

I do remember. I did get rid of the little one I had and bought a nice big new one. My mistake. I have a good memory, but not for filter names it would seem. I feel stupid now

Luckily it is not my main filter.

Anyway, no point beating up on myself, I need to fix this up. I will do as you suggest immediately and also do a water change. Thanks again Krystal.

Regards,

Donna

[Brett]

Hi Donna,

First thing I would do is try another test kit But I am sure you have done this already.
Carbon can be worse than useless, once its capacity is reached it can leech its chemicals back into the tank. I am guessing it is gone by now anyway. Does anyone know if it can leech ammonia back into the water??
I don't worry about filters , my nitrogen reducers are fast growing plants. Floating plants and adequate lighting usually takes care of it.
Did you ever do the experiment with the water conditioner to see if that gave a false +ve ammonia reading.
Did you mention what substarte you are using?

Cheers
Brett

[Donna]

Hi Brett,

I have Amano Amazonia in the Juwel tank. I have Eco complete in the 60cm tank and plain orange/brown gravel in the 4 foot tank. I have never had any trouble in the tanks with the eco or the Amano soil. My smaller tanks are all glass bottomed and I use them mainly for growing cuttings from my plants or in emergencies

I tried the water conditioner test...no go..it did not visibly affect the ammonia reading. The tank I have been having trouble with is the gravel tank, and incidently, same type of gravel in the Juwel tank when I had trouble with it that's why I switched to the Amazonia. I have had no trouble since with that tank.

In the gravel tank I have removed the carbon filter and added some extra media as instructed to the hang on filter. I made a mistake by replacing my old small hang on filter with one that was not the brand recommended to me (the names sounded similar) and so this could have made a difference perhaps, however, I do have other filters and did not rely just on the hang on filter.

Anyway, all fish are safe for now, however, my beautiful swords are dead. I have planted them in the eco complete tank hoping they may regenerate. The crypts seem to be ok, but I had to uproot them, so I have replanted. They are notorious for melting when planting but I am sure they will come back off the tuber. They look fine for now. All other plants seem fine.

Back to the drawing board.

Thanks for the comments,

Donna

[Krystal]

I do remember. I did get rid of the little one I had and bought a nice big new one. My mistake. I have a good memory, but not for filter names it would seem. I feel stupid now

That was not my intention....just making sure what filter we are actually talking about....all clear now

Keep us updated, and as Oliver suggested, just keep water changing at the moment and no food for the fish.....your synos can be a bit messy. Its not normally this hard, but there is a reason for these things happening....now just finding out why.

[Brett]

Hello again Donna,

I have gravel in all my tanks. Mostly the 2-3mm quartz from CIM. It is completely inert and doesn't cause any problems.
Generally I use various clay/vermiculite mixes under the gravel. This is largely an anaerobic zone as mentioned in my previous post, again no problems with pH or ammonia.

Can you recall which came first, the pH fall/ammonia or the plant death?

If some toxin that kills plants got into your tank, then the decaying plant matter would result in a rise in ammonia and falling pH. The fact that the healthy plants would have been consuming most of the ammonia and then this would stop, would tend to aggravate the problem. Your filter which had previously been chugging along doing virtually nothing, would suddenly be overwhelmed.

The mystery continues

Cheers
Brett

[Donna]

Hi Brett,

That's a good point about the plants taking up some of the slack in the tank from the filter. When they stopped operating perhaps the filter was overwhelmed...I had not thought of that aspect. I had a good 6 or 7 swords and one really large one so they would have had some impact on the system. I am not sure the order that everything unfolded in but the plants seemed to go "see through" prettty quickly.

I took some measurements this morning and ammonia levels are still dark green but look one shade lighter. As a temporary measure I have added a small amount of zeolite, I have never used this before and would be keen to hear people's opinions on its usefulness. I do not intend using it in the long term.

On the bright side....I need new plants Road trip

Thanks again for some constructive comments Brett,

Regards,

Donna

[Donna]

Update....I have to update on this.

It gets stranger and stranger. Now, all my tanks are reading green

But, tap water is coming up yellow, so you would think nothing is wrong with the kit.

What would you deduct from this? If I do regular water changes, which I do...would you suspect the water conditioner?

I don't know what to do next....fish are all alive, eating...etc etc....

Any clues?

thanks

Donna

[Krystal]

Apart from water conditioner do you add ANYTHING at all to the aquariums? Your using an API test kit arent you?

And im sure you dont but do you wash your filters under tap water?

I would not be so quick to blame the water conditioner to give false reading, out of interest what brand is it?

Oliver was saying something about a particular test kit reacting with certain chemicals and additives....knew i should have listened properly....i would not worry about it because for memory it not an overly common kit...

[Donna]

Hi Krystal,

But I am worried, day and night.

Yes, I use API.

I only tested my 60cm planted tank because I wanted it to be a stand by for emergencies and wanted to be absolutely sure there was no ammonia. No fish are in this aquarium, it is planted only...and sure enough, the same dark green as the other tanks?

I am at a loss....the fish are not suffering, so I have to think it is a false reading in all tanks except that the tap water is giving a yellow reading which would suggest no problem with the kit wouldn't it?

Maybe I should just stop testing?

Will get a new test kit this week and solve this once and for all.

Thanks Krystal and everyone,

Regards,

Donna

[Krystal]

Maybe I should just stop testing?

Out of sight, out of mind!

In all seriousness....i would definitely get a different kit and check again. For a planted aquarium with no fish to have the highest ammonia reading then something is not quite right. Keep us posted.

[Mr_docfish]

hey Donna, can you drop that dud ammonia kit off at the shop one day for me to look at???
I would like to know what has gone wrong with it for future reference and inform the manufacturer if there is anything they can do to prevent it from happening.

[Donna]

Hey O,

I might just take you up on that. It has been very frustrating. The four foot now has two tetra, one full grown male krib and one juvenile krib. That is it. The catfish are in a smaller tank because I feared for their lives thinking they would be more sensitive to any probs, plus Krystal said they may be a little messy, and even though I have not fed the fish for 5 days or so, I have still decided to remove them to see if it has any effect.

Tested again tonight, still the dark green. It seems impossible with this stock and the amount of water changes going on that the ammonia could be that high. I am changing around 50 litres a day and I am hoping this is enough? Still, immediately after a change, colour is still the same (which has been explained to me could be because the levels are sky high and the water change is not impacting). What is not ringing true though is when I checked the tap water with the water conditioner in it, it stayed yellow?

I increased the hang on filter media as suggested and added all the small filters I have that were on tanks with stock and also have two large internal filters running.

I do not have a canister filter.

kH is low, 3 and so is pH 6.

Thanks again for replies,

Donna

[Codfather]

Hi Donna,

I'm still backing a false positive reading because of your neutraliser.
Most ammonia tests use Nessler's reagent. Nessler's reagent gives false positives when exposed to unreacted sodium hydroxymethanesulfonate.
Sodium hydroxymethanesulfonate is probably in your neutraliser and you'll be able to smell it. Smells a bit like methane and a bit like sulphur.
If you didn't get a positive reading for ammonia in your tap water, it's likely that there was no unreacted neutraliser. Even if you add neutraliser to your fish tank at the same rate as your test sample, there is still a much higher probability of unreacted neutraliser in the tank because a lot of chlorine will have reacted with organics in the tank. To check if your neutraliser inteferes with your test, increase the amount of neutraliser so that you can be sure some is left unreacted in the test sample.

HTH

[Donna]

Hi again,

So you think I should check the water making sure there is some unreacted water conditioner?

Ok will do, will let you know the result.

Regards,

Donna

[Mr_docfish]

If it were nesslers reagent, then the colour chart will be in the yellow/brown range... Donna is using the new API Ammonia test kits (they stopped the nesslers reagent test kit some years ago) which ranges from yellow to green. I am not disputing that there is something amiss with the actual kit in question, that is why I would like to look at it and investigate the causes, if any, in case it happens again in the future.

I am at pains to understand why some people in Perth still insist on specifically using conditioners that bind chloramines/ammonia - as the Perth Metropolitan water does not contain chloramines... only the Goldfields line from the Mundaring Weir contains chloramines.... in this case, I would use Stress Coat Plus from API, as it does not contain hydroxymethanesulfonates or other unstable products, that can become toxic if stored in hot warehouses...

It would not hurt though to do the exercise as mentioned by Codfather just to see - let me know what the result is... I am interested in this one....

[Donna]

Hi everyone,

I did another test with the conditioner in the water and it is not the cause of the readings. I put more than enough in to neutralise and for there to be some left over and still it was yellow on the API test kit.

So this tells me it is not the kit, and not the conditioner.....however, it could indicate that the conditioner has knocked the filters out? However, that no way explains the ammonia readings in a tank set up last Monday from scratch......or the ammonia readings in my fully planted tank (no livestock), my heavily stocked tank, and my hardly stocked tank.

Thanks,

Donna

[Mr_docfish]

Are you using "Aqua Soil" in the planted tanks?

what other products are you using (especially those common to both tanks)

[Donna]

Hi,

I am not using any product at all except for water condtioner. Nothing. I have Amazonia substrate in one tank, eco in another and gravel in the four foot. The only product added is frozen bloodworm and brine shrimp plus algae wafers for the BN.

I perform 25% water changes weekly without fail using conditioned water. I do put some warm water in the replacement water to match tank temperature. I only ever roughly rinse filter media in tank water, I never, ever wash them in the true sense.

Tanks are fairly lightly stocked imo. Four foot, previously had two catfish, two tetra, two kribs. Metre tank does have a large green severum that I hope to move to the four foot but waiting for these ammonia shenanagans to be over before moving him. One really, really large BN and various dwarf cichlids. Nothing major. 60cm planted tank has no fauna.

Regards,

Donna

[Brett]

It must be the ammonia fairy, who sneaks into your house every night to pee in your tanks

Keep up that detective work Donna

Cheers
Brett