My water was very clean without any dirt in it, but the ammonia is high, is it serious?

Question

My tank was in good condition that the water really clean for over 2 weeks, but when i test the ammonia, it was up to 7.5, will it be danger for the fish? But you can't notice any dirt from the water, beside ammonia removal medicine, what should i bought for the water?

Answer 1

Apart from using amo lowering liquid, keep a few floatwoods in your tank which should take care of this problem once and for all.

Answer 2

Change your filter. Perhaps getting a bigger filter for your tank may be necessary if you have too many fish in one tank and are letting out a lot of waste. Which cause high amounts of Ammonia. Ammonia basically cuts off oxygen supply to your fish and makes they rapidly breathe. So change your filter, do a water change and vacuum suck up the waste in the rocks as much as you can. Use regular tap water, no chemicals to clean the tank, just water. You'll have a great clean tank in no time. Another possibility is that you are not doing water changes enough....? Edit your question and add how many fish you have in what size tank would be easier to answer....

GOOD LUCK!

Answer 3

Surprisingly water quality isn't determined by clarity. It's determined by the water parameters.

If a tank of mine registered 7.5ppm ammonia, I'd do 50% water changes PER DAY until ammonia levels are reduced to 1ppm or less. Your tank isn't established yet. When it becomes fully cycled ammonia will drop to and stay at 0ppm unless something's out of wack.

In my fully cycled established tanks ammonia of just 0.5ppm would be an alarming situation. Ammonia levels at above 5.0ppm will pretty much kill all but the hardiest of fish and damage the gill linings of the fish that manage to tolerate those conditions.

Answer 4

Ammonia is very dangerous for fish...

Obviosly your tank has not been cycled yet.

I'd suggest get PRIME (it is a water conditioner that will bind the ammonia cell and escape in the air)

if you don't have fish in your tank yet, i'll suggest wait other 2 or 3 more weeks before you put fish in. IF there's no fish, you will see Ammonia rise the drop to zero then you will see nitrite rise then drop to zero. Then the last phrase will be NitrAtes which will rise but keep it below 20ppm. If it rise to 60ppm, time for 30 or 40% water change then after that, if the nitrAtes are zero you're ready for fish.

Some city water company add ammonia for cleaniness, so get a clean glass and fill it with water from the tap and treat it with Prime and leave it overnight (24 hours best) and test your cup of water with your tester and see if ammonia, nitrite and NitrAte is already in your tap water, if you do, you'll need LOTS of Prime to treat your tank and treat it with water changes from now on. If you saw lots of chemicals or your test results are high and you might need to consider three things:

1. install Reverse Omission (sp?) for your fish use only

2. buy a big trash bucket (30 gallon bucket) and fill it with water and treat the whole new water with Prime and put an airstone with pump in to emit ammonia or chlorie out of water (let it sit for 2 or 3 days) and use the treated water for water changes.

3. Buy Seachem Matrix and Seachem Purigen media, they will emit ammonia and Nitrites and some NitrAtes by themselves and the Seachem Matrix permenant media and will not need to be replace at all (just rinse and wash them in old tank water) never from tap. Purigen needs to be recharged by using bleach (i'll avoid use bleach) and i'll just replace Purigen if cash does not matter to you.

4. You might have rinsed or washed your filter medias in tap water which killed all important baterica which your tank is going through mini-cycle.

hope it helps.

Answer 5

Ammonia is a problem. It is a waste product.
Do you have a filter? If you don't have an under gravel filter in already, you probably won't want to tear everything up to put one in, but I always liked them. You could get a charcoal filter or there may be enzyme products that will break the ammonia down into harmless products. You can also let some water sit in a clean container for 24 hours and then remove some water from the tank and add the fresh water, no more than 25% at a time. Try to get the temperature as close as possible to the tank's temperature.

Answer 6

Although ammonia is too dangerous it is not if you have just installed your aquarium, the amonia level will keep on rising for a high lever for a week before the anti ammonia bacteria grow in your aquarium and starts destroying it so be patient if it is a new water filled aquarium with lots of fish in it.

Answer 7

This is a new tank right? I'm assuming you havn't cycled your tank. You will need to do water changes very often, maybe even daily, until the ammonia levels are back to 0.

Ammonia is extreamly dangerous to fish. It damages there gills and makes it tough for them to breath.

Also, i don't recomend chemicals for lowering ammonia levels. All they do is convert the ammonia to a less toxic form. But, even in it's less toxic form it can show up on an ammonia test. Plus, in its less toxic form it wont be available to the Nitrafying bacteria that your tank needs to be healthy.

Read this article, there is 4 parts to it. It will explain the nitrogen cycle better.

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/pic/article.cfm?dept_id=0&siteid=6&acatid=415&aid=652

Good luck

Answer 8

Your nitrogen cycle is not complete yet.
Either you don't have an enough sized filter or your filter is not set up long enough, in that case you'll have to be patient.

7.5 ppm is pretty dangerous. What you can do is do 10% water change every day until ammonia level drop.

Answer 9

it is serious for the fish as it can kill them or damage their gills for life and will cause a premature death to your fish, but it is easy to control by not over feeding ( food should be consumed within 3 minutes from feeding time ) vacuum your gravel weekly ( with water change ) and for now just change 10% of water daily until ammonia levels go down.

Answer 10

Water changes should help with the ammonia. you may have too many fish in there for the good bacteria to keep up with. you may need more filtration.

Answer 11

ammonia will kill everything in the tank in a short period of time, you need to do 25% water changes every few days to help get rid of the ammionia