I’m a new fish owner and I’m having a major ammonia problem. Any ideas what could be causing this?

Question

I’ve had my tank for about 5 months, for the first 2 months, everything was fine, my fish were even breeding.
Then my building discovered that is had termites and we had to leave the building. I took EVERYTHING that could come into contact with my fish. Even the furniture. We waited an extra week before bringing them back. Now, I can’t seem to get the ammonia under control. I’ve done 4 30% water changes, and then last night I checked the levels and they were sky high. I did a 100% water change, bleached the rocks, bleached the tank, and the inside of the filters. [As directed by my local PetCo] 4 Hours later, the ammonia was okay. 14 Hours later, the ammonia is through the roof.
The Aquatic Fish Department and my are at a lost.
Does anyone have ANY ideas?
I’m willing to take Hoodoo into consideration at this point.
My friends make fun of me for stressing over these poor creatures so much, but I’d rather cut them [my friends] out of my life that cause a living creature harm.

I'm sorry, I forgot to mention.
It's a 20 gallon.
10 tiger barbs [About 1.5’ in size]
5 phantom tetras [2”]
3 mollies [1.5”]
1 platy [1”]
1 spotted catfish. [2”]
I have an aqua clear 20 gallon filtration system & a 40 gallon whisper running.

I had them in split tanks [Another 10 gallon that's now empty], but my heater broke down & I don't have the funds to replace it. My PetCo suggested putting them together with the two filters running. I have the equivalent of a 60 gallon filter running in a 20 gallon tank.
& I have a special ammonia removal pouch in the aqua clear filter.
Not to mention that they were all in the same tank WELL before the problem started

Answer 1

To sum it up, your tank is cycling again due to the move and more recently due to the super cleaning. Frankly, what Petco told you to do was possibly the worst posible advice. You need certain beneficial bacteria in your tank to control the ammonia. Your tank got those in the beginning and was fine. Now after the move many of the bacteria were killed and the ammonia started to climb again. After their advice, none are left basically. Due to the number of fish in the tankyou need a starter of this bacteria in a major way. GO to a friend with a tank or in a major pinch to the petco that messed up so badly and explain you need some gravel from an established tank. From a friend with a tank that's been running a few months would be best, a local small petshop second and Petco as a last resort. Treat this gravel as if it were a fish. Bag it with water from the tank and float it to acclimate the bacteria before adding it to your tank.

Once you have this gravel, place it in a mesh bag and into your tank or better yet into your filter behind or inside of your filter bag. A little of it in each place wouldn't be a bad idea. Make a mesh bag from pieces of pantyhose or stockings. Just cut the foot off and you have one. Part of the leg can be tied at top and bottom to make another.

This will jump start the cycle, but not take care of everything. You will still need to do 50-60% water changes daily for a week or more until the bacteria grow and spread through out your tank and filter. As soon as you see the ammonia start to go down some on it's own (about a week) try to get a second little starter of gravel to use and add that. Once the ammonia is at 0 for a few days without water changes you can remove the borrowed gravel.

Here's alink to a page that will help you understand what's going on in your tank and what to expect over the new few weeks. Be sure to follow to the other pages at the bottom of the first one.

http://www.firsttankguide.net/

Hope this helps

ADDITION: Don't use any ammonia control products, they will only intefer with the bacteria developing properly. Also, keep the tank cool. Ammonia is less toxic at cooler temperatures.

MM

Answer 2

Do you use white carbon (zeolite) and salt? If so when you do a water change and add salt the zeolite will exchange the ammonia it soaked up for salt. The ammonia removing pad in the filter will do the same thing. Also bleach shouldn't have been used. Its all ammonia. Why would Petco tell you to use bleach? SO SO Toxic. What you will learn is Petco doesn't care about fish only selling stuff. Don't ever listen to them, they'll kill your fish faster than you will. Now you have broken down the system, added a toxic chemical to the mix and the fish are doomed. There is no beneficial bacteria to clear the ammonia and it will spike, first due to the bleach, then the fish will add to it. The tank is going to have to recycle. I'm sorry. I'm not too sure why the ammonia was spiking before the bleaching. At that point you started completely over and what happened before doesn't matter. I would remove the fish to an unbleached tank. Rinse everything that you bleached. I'd fill the tank at least 5 times and drain it. Remove all the rocks the bleach will never come out of those. Get new rocks. Rinse your filter over and over and over. Replace all the padding and media. Replace all the tubing and airstones, too hard to get out the bleach. Sorry the dipsh*t at Petco told you the most awful thing to do to a tank. I'd have something to say to the management. He killed your fish with horrible advice. Boycot them from here on out. They suck.

Answer 3

the problem is you changed too much water and you have too many fish, 1 inch of fish per gallon. and i cannot believe they told you to use bleach but anyways, your tank is begining its cycle. bascially it is creating bacteria in the tank, when you start a tank fresh, the bacteria wil rapidly form creating a plume or white cloud. all of that bacteria is creating the ammonia, it will clear up, hopefully your fish will survive it but i have lost a couple fish through the same thing, there are amonia packets you can get from petstores to put into the filters. it's meant to prevent amonia in tanks that hold alot of fish like the tank i store my feeder goldfish in, i don't know if it will help or not but i would definately ask someone about it. things to remember, NEVER do a 100% water change, only maybe 10% once a month, this will keep enough bacteria in the tank so you wont have to go through the cycle again, also, i don't know that i would go back to that pet store. also never change the water and filters at the same time. you need to alternate what you do to the tank. filters need to be changed only once a month. what we do is we will do a 10% water change, 2 weeks later do the filters, 2 weeks later water, and 2 weeks again back to the filters and just continue with that because it is 4 weeks between each water change and 4 weeks between the filter changes. I hope this help and you get it under control. i would start looking for a smaller pet store where you know the people working there actually know what they are talking about rather than some high school kid doing a summer job. ;)

Answer 4

Those petco people are retards. Bleaching the tank is about the worst thing you could ever do to a tank, especially if its having cycle problems. And bleaching a filter is just insane. There is never a good reason to bleach a filter. You may need to buy a new biological sponge cartridge for your filter. It could still have bleach in its fibers.

Ammonia is what you get from fish pee. You need bacteria to eat the ammonia & convert it to nitrites. Bleach and chlorine (in untreated tap water) kill bacteria. With no bacteria to eat the ammonia & convert it to nitrites, it will just grow in quantity until its toxic.

If your ph is too low (like 6.2 i think) bacterial growth can be inhibited also.

What you SHOULD do to get things back on track is to:

1: Do one big water change, and put extra dechlorinator in the water since there's probably some bleach hanging around in it. If the ph is low, you can buffer it up with around 0.5 to 1 tablespoon of fresh baking soda.

2: Add BioSpyra (from refridgerator section of local fish store, I don't think petco sells it) (its live bacteria in a bag). If they don't have BioSpyra, you may be able to try a double dose of Fritz Zyme, but its much less effective since most of the bacteria in the bottle will be dead.

3. Optionally Add a Sponge Filter (the cheap $6 kind that hook up to an air pump line). This will give the bacteria somewhere to live. They're very useful with ammonia in smaller tanks.

Leave the tank alone for a few days. If you must, you can use an ammonia detoxifying product that converts am3 to am4 molecules like api's AmQuel. It will still read as toxic on your tests, but it will be a less toxic form of ammonia to the fish, and a form of ammonia that the bacteria can eat.

From this point on, you shouldn't do any large water changes, only small ones but more frequently. Large water changes can damage bacterial colonies, especially if the water isn't dechlorinated before you pour it into the tank.

You can also add some aquarium salt to help the fish from being harmed by the massive ammounts of nitrites from what comes next.

Do not use zeolite or amocarb or any product / media that absorbs ammonia.

Answer 5

The good bacteria that was keeping your tank parameters stable got messed up (probably first when you moved the tank things sloshed around a bit) and then you wiped them out by bleaching everything. Your tank is now cycling, or trying to. You can either go to a good tropical fish store and buy Marineland's Bio-Spira (has to be kept cold so live bacteria won't die) which is good bacteria to populate your tank--don't do any tank cleanings for a week, don't use Amquel+ with it either. Or you can do the daily water exchange--remove 30-50% of water every day to keep the ammonia and nitrite level in check until the bacteria the fish are depositing can build up sufficiently to handle the stuff. It's going to be very tricky to do a fish-in-tank cycling since you have so many fish though, you may lose some fish.

Answer 6

I know how you feel...I love my fishies, too....my guess is going to be that you have too many fish in a 20 gallon tank and the water and filter can't handle the waste output....the rule of thumb is 1 inch of fish per one gallon of water. Based on your descriptions of your fish, you are at at least double that. It sounds like your filter can handle a bigger tank..maybe can you upgrade to a 29 or a 30 gallon???

Answer 7

Too much fish pee, get some drops and clean the tank tank more often. It mostly happens when there are too many fish in one tank, or the tank is to small, also get a little amonia level sticker if you don't have one.

Answer 8

The 100% change did it. You never got your tank cycled and did too many water changes.

Answer 9

Its okay....just find out who's pissing into your tank