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Pet Forum / Aquaria / Cichlids / April 2004safe ammonia level
rosebud: I try to keep a resonable tank for our chiclids. The ammonia level seems to be stayin at a level of between 0-1ppm. My assumption is that this a good level. But I wonder sometimes if it should be better. I use spring water when I do water changes. I have tested the clorine and ammonia levels in this water to see if it is ok. It test to be much better than ourt city water. So, I feel the fish have good water. The ph levels in the water always seem to be rather on the base side and never acidic. My question is if the 0-1 ppm is safe for our little guys on a continued basis? > rosebud: > I try to keep a resonable tank for our chiclids. The ammonia level [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > My question is if the 0-1 ppm is safe for our little guys on a > continued basis? I think it's very unhealthy. A 'cycled' aquarium should always register zero on the test kits available to hobbyists. There might be _some_ ammonia, but it is below the threshold of the test kit. There has never been published a 'safe' level of ammonia (NH3) because there are too many variables involved (including species susceptibility). That your water is more base, means the ammonia takes more of the toxic NH3 form than the non-toxic NH4 form, which is not to your advantage, but don't change your pH! You need to establish a colony of nitrifying bacteria whose waste processing ability matches the rate at which ammonia is added to the tank (fish waste, decaying plant matter, pre-existing ammonia or chloramines in source water etc). Typically, the main source of ammonia is the fish food you drop in, so any feeding reduction should result in a drop of ammonia. To keep your bacteria population prosperous, they need a large surface area with moving water, which is why they move into filter's sponge media. Never overclean these sponges. Use several of them and never clean them all at the same time. Never stop the water flow through them (the bacteria are aerobic and need the fresh oxygen). I think your easiest solution is to add more filtration. This provides the bacteria more space to colonize. If you are running a community tank with a normal fish load, and feeding twice a day, then your filter sizing is typical (as per manufacturer's recommendations), and any live plants help with your filtering. If you are running a tank of cichlids with the hearty appetite we know most of them have, then you need to increase your filtration beyond manufacturer's recommendations (typically double). If you feed more than twice a day and/or use a lot of live or high protein food (ie: Oscar tank), then do not be surprised if you find that you need to filter your tank at 3 or 4 times higher than manufacturer's recommendations. hth NetMax NetMax wrote in message ... >> rosebud: >> I try to keep a resonable tank for our chiclids. The ammonia level [quoted text clipped - 46 lines] > >NetMax last night I had the shock of testing 2 of my tanks to find the presence of NITRITE! *shock* this could be due to the fact that I added 12 new little fish to this 120 gallon tank I think. I added a total of around 12 inches of fish, so I guess I should have expected a mini cycle... it's only 0.2mg/L. but all this has got me worried about my filtration. I'm starting to wonder if it is adequate. (details of my filtration can be found in a previous post). > NetMax wrote in message ... > > [quoted text clipped - 56 lines] > if it is adequate. (details of my filtration can be found in a previous > post). A few thousand posts and none from a Paul with 'filtration' in the title, so maybe you could give me a hint (a link). For whatever reason, nitrites are not typically a sign of insufficient filtration. NO2 just means you have mini-cycled, or not finished cycling. NetMax >> NetMax wrote in message ... >> > [quoted text clipped - 91 lines] > >NetMax so excess ammonia would be a sign of inadequate filtration but not NO2? ok now I am learning something new.. I will continue to monitor and test my tank to try to understand what is going on in there. > so excess ammonia would be a sign of inadequate filtration but not NO2? > ok now I am learning something new.. I will continue to monitor and test my > tank to try to understand what is going on in there. Remember that the nitrogen cycle consists of two steps, first the bacteria that convert ammonia to nitrite, then the bacteria that convert nitrite to nitrate. If you have nitrite but no ammonia, that means you have sufficient surface area in the filter media for the ammonia consuming bacteria, because they have processed the extra ammonia from the new fish, producing nitrite as a by-product. This will likely mean sufficient space for the nitrite consuming bacteria as well, just that the bacterial colony needs to grow in numbers to handle the new bioload. Thus there is adequate filtration if the nitrite spike goes away over the course of a week or so. If you have a persistent ammonia spike however (with or without nitrite), you need more filtration because there isn't a large enough ammonia bacteria colony to start the nitrogen cycle. This is usually due to either not enough flow (from an underpowered or clogged filter) or simply just not enough surface space for bacterial colonies. Adding more biological filtration at least would be a good idea in such a case. Add more mechanical filtration if there is a debris problem as well. re my filtration system: posted in alt.aquaria 19/04, you replied. here is a cut and paste of the relevent info: Hi folks, some of you may remember last year in september, I set myself up a 4'x2'x2' tank. with some expert advice from Frank and Netmax, I decided on a sump system. My tank has holes drilled up at the top of the tank, so I have two pipes going down each back corner, so the water is drawn from the substrate level, in the back left and back right corners. I've got an excellent prefilter system that I clean regularly. I have a pump that has a flow rate of around 1800 Litres/hour. which I calculate empties my tank around 4.5 times an hour. my stocking level has just increased to around 35 fish, though many of these fish are only an inch long. so i reckon that I probably have around 80 inches of fish in the tank. I have to say that I feed the fish quite heavily, up to 4 times a day, as much as they can eat in a minute or two. very little hits the substrate. I feed 8 vege flake and HBH cichlid attach pellets. So, from what I have researched, my filtration system should match my fish load nicely, infact this filtration should rate as above average I believe. The problem is however is that I have some debris on the bottom of the tank, it's enough debris to kick up a small puff of gunk when a fish swishes near the bottom, that soon settles again. I have also noticed that the parts of the tank that I don't gravel vac every week (ie the bits inbetween rocks and inside caves etc) tend to release a fair few small bubbles when disturbed after lying untouched for a couple of weeks. This is disturbing to me! I really though that anaerobic activity was a sign of a very dirty tank. I gravel vac every week, but because I have such alot of heavy rock work it is impracticle to dismantle it every week at gravel vac time. so I'm thinking I must need to either increase the flow rate of my sump pump (by a bigger pump?) or add some kind of internal filter to kick up that gunk and get it either down the sump pipes or trapped in the prefilter of the internal filter. I can get an internal filter really cheap, it does around 2500 L/hour. The only problem I have with this is that I don't want to create such a current down on the substrate level that the fish will not be able to sleep comfortabley. |
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