How To Fix An Ammonia Spike In Your Aquarium! - Lowering Ammonia Levels In 3 EASY Steps!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.ย. 2024
- #aquarium #shrimptank #science
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Ammonia is a toxic compound produced by our fish, shrimp and snail waste as well as the natural processes that already happen in our tank. Normally your nitrifying bacteria takes care of this but sometimes, something happens to your cycle and you need to take emergency action. In this quick video I explain my 3 easy steps for dealing with and solving ammonia spikes.
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FINALLY!! Some USEFUL information! I am having the same problem in my 29gal long community tank. Water a little milky after an algae bloom I got rid of with a UV light. Problem was cloudy water remained. It was an Ammonia spike! I had been using "Prime" to keep the Ammonia detoxified but never thought about the daily water changes and my BB ! I unplugged my UV as the "Stability" states to do in the directions and will be testing daily while using the Prime/Stability method to see if the Ammonia starts to neutralize. During the Bloom, I went to feeding every other day to prevent Ammonia build up. I think the constant W/C's were the reason for the spike. Tank was constantly recycling. Thanks for the info bud !!
Glad you liked it! Hopefully it helps out! Always nice to see positive comments haha
I like seachem stability. I am using API ammo lock. Seems in so far. Ill try prime if I end up in this moment again.....ammonia 4ppm.....had a dead fish I couldn't find i thought my cat got him turns out he buried himself and got himself stuck in a very small spot that I missed. Hus name was Julian, he was a false juli I loved that guy so much personality
Aww that's sad. Sorry for your loss.
Stability is great for providing bacteria to help cycle the tank and ammo lock will do a similar thing to the Prime so you should be fine with that.
Is the ammonia that high because of the death? Or was it that high before the death? There is a serious issue with your cycle if it was like that before the fish died, I would be tempted to add another sponge or something in the tank to provide more surface area for the bacteria.
Just wanted to say thank you for actually saying some PPM numbers. That helped figure out the level of panic. 😅
Happy to help! Thanks so much for watching!
ahh thank you, it’s been slowly rising and i don’t have the funds to get a bigger tank to help prevent ammonia overload. i’m gunna go out and get some more beneficial bacteria and do 2 water changes a week instead of one
this has been a huge stresser, me and my fish thank you!
Happy to help. If you keep the dechlorinator in there, the ammonia will stay safe and not harm your fish.
@@BobMossNanoTanks ahh okay, thanks!
@@delilah4397 let me know if you have any more issues or questions! I want everyone to have healthy livestock!
@@BobMossNanoTanks That shelve storing your aquarium looks nice. Where did you buy it?
@@augukern9708 it's an Amazon basics 5 shelf
This guy definitely knows what he's talking about. I use the same Prime dechlorinator every time I do a water change, and even though its pricy it works amazing. I live in a place with very hard water and struggled for a over a year, trying to balance all the levels in my tank, with lots of losses, and headaches. Honestly the easy fix to about 90% of my issues, has been simply just putting a second filter on my tank. I have a 60 gallon fresh water tank with 2 top filters and my water levels are perfect, with crystal clear water. Fish aren't just surviving but thriving, and breeding like crazy. Im pretty amazed at how well having 2 filters works, versus adding all kinds of chemicals, and solutions to fix water issues.
Aw thank you! I also double filter most of my "larger" tanks, if you consider 30 gallons large lol.
the info i needed !!! thankyou so much
Happy I could help! Thank you for watching!
Thanks for this info, it's exactly what I need! I've had a new tank set up for over a month.
The past three days I've tested the ammonia has been 0ppm and i thought the cycle had completed so I order some shrimp that are coming tomorrow and today there was a spike :(
I had the same thing happen and by doing this stuff I managed to save most of the new guys :)
Never panic just toke and smoke b4 ypu start the Day 🍀🦐🌿👍
How else would I get stuff done? Lol
Literally smoking before I tackle this amonia spike 😅
My discus tank spike to 8ppm 2 days after a bi weekly water change have 0 idea what happened just started seeing them all look REALLY BAD and I was able to save them with this exact same method.
That's great to hear you saved them!
As for the spike, if nothing died or was rotting, there's a potential that the ammonia came from the replacement water. I'll assume you're using straight tap water and dechlorinating it. If they just did maintenance at the plant, it could be from that. Also, if your city uses chloramine instead of chlorine, the dechlorination process splits that into chlorine and ammonia, which could also be the source.
@@BobMossNanoTanks I looked it up and my city uses chloramine. I never would’ve thought of that. My water has been testing at 1 ppm even after water changes. I did a detoxify dose of aqua essential, and added some more quick start as well. I’ll test it again in the AM. My shrimp seem to be doing fine. I even spotted my first tiny baby tonight! Like a little speck of dust with a shadow 😅 I hope this doesn’t create more ammonia 🤦♀️ but detoxifies what’s in there, since the chlorine has always read 0 after treating.
Your doing a grand job👌
Thank you very much!
water change first. then add prime and stability. you continue your daily treatment until it reaches zero.
Great info! Thank you!
Thank you for watching!
Shrimp make everything harder. First time shrimp keeper, long time fish keeper. Im doing the prime. Go science.
Yes, they are a bit more sensitive. Once you figure them out, though, they're super easy!
Very good video and to the point. Thanks a lot my friend but you did not mention Zeolite, any reason??
Well to be honest, when I made this video I had never heard of the stuff. Now that I am a bit more informed, I am still not sold on it 100%. I'm sure it helps but it also binds the heavy metals that your plants use. I would much rather dose prime and do a water change, personally.
I am having an ammonia spike b/c I installed an undergravel filter, and changed the substrate.
I saved some of the old gravel in a bag, but I still have .5 ppm.
Just keep up the prime dosing and let the cycle do it's thing!
@@BobMossNanoTanks It worked!!
My little tetras are happy as clams
Good info! Too funny at the end! 🤣😂
Thank you! Glad you liked it!
If you took an editing class and upgraded your camera/lighting I think you could be one of the big TH-cam streamers on this subject. Not hating just want you to succeed love the videos
Thank you very much! This video is over a year old now, I have upgraded some things and I've been working on my editing :) Let me know what you think of some of the newer videos if you have some time!
Great video❤. My only question is , once you put the product and do the water change, you have to re add the same portion of product? Then what’s the point for water change?
Dosing the product neutralizes the ammonia right then and there to help prevent further problems. The water change is to lower the ammonia levels by adding in fresh water. If you're quick with the water change I suppose you could skip the first dosing.
i got 2 years old fresh water tank, recently on top of the water level there are bubbles , not sure any fish trying to nesting .. but i got 3 fish down, they got half of the body is white . any advices ?
Sorry for the slow response, but that is likely an ammonia spike. You should be using something like Prime to detoxify the ammonia and doing regular water changes to get the parameters back stable. You may need to also use some medication to repair any damage the fish have suffered.
Could I add the prime and stability in the tank with fish?
100%. Apparently you can't even overdose stability, according to the bottle lol.
I've had one yesterday 8ppm the test showed currently at 1ppm after a few water changes devastated that I lost 5 fish cos of it (3 of them being expensive as well)
Damn, that sucks! Did you find the root cause?
@@BobMossNanoTanks I'm thinking it's the repashy I've been feeding my catfish at night and the fact I put quite a bit in which I'll cut back on but it still sucks
What was the ammonia level in your tank during the spike? Also how long did it take for the cycle to happen since you noticed spike and acted on it? Thanks in advance for the answers.
If I recall it was around 0.5ppm and took about a week to clear up with dosing Prime and doing water changes every couple of days.
Hi, great video. One question, I have no fish so no deaths and no feeding. I had gravel with a few yabbies for a month or two and had zero ammonia zero nitrites and nitrates that were almost at at the stage of a water change. I emptied the tank water into the bath all but about a third wouldn’t fit (120l) (6ft tank about 400l). I have set up a dirted tank with 1in dirt 2-3in sand, planted and with some rocks and a log from local creek. 3-4 days later I have massive ammonia levels zero nitrite and high but safe levels of nitrates. Any ideas on the ammonia source and the plants look like dying, would high ammonia hammer the plants as well? Thanks mate 👍
Used the water put into the bath and topped with tap water.
so this is a weird one. if i am reading this correctly, my assumption would be that whatever cleaner you use on your bathtub has made its way into the tank, killed some good bacteria and crashed the cycle. time will fix that.
high ammonia will kill your plants, which causes higher ammonia levels as they rot. its a negative feedback loop.
Hi, I'm presently cycling my new planted 35 gallons aquarium tank. It's been over 2 weeks since I've started my cycling process. I tested the water and nitrite is at 0 but my Ammonia is at 0.25
Should I do something about it like adding prime? Or should I simply wait till the cycle completes itself in order for the ammonia goes down to 0.
All I did so far is starting my aquarium with Natrafin Cycle, adding fish food any other day, adding Flourish Excel for the plants.
I didn't do any big water change cause I've been told water changes can slow down the cycling process.
I can't wait to add shrimps and snail
I would be kind of worried having 0 nitrites after 2 weeks, you should have a reading by now. I would keep adding an ammonia source, keep it around 2-3ppm until you notice the bacteria producing nitrates.
The excel might actually be hurting your cycle. It's not what you think it is lol. They do a good job marketing it but it's an algaecide, that stuff is probably killing some of your bacteria TBH. I would be patient, no need to mess with anything while the bacteria is establishing.
@@BobMossNanoTanks ok. Good to know. Thanks
@@slickvim Happy to help!
Sir all tests was ok with the api test kit apart from ammonia how come. Is it safe to use api tap water conditioner or I should shift to your product pls let know sir. Thank you.
Your tank might not be cycled completely. Also, sometimes you get a false positive on the ammonia. The conditioner you have should be fine, prime is just super concentrated.
Here for the casual knowledge indeed
Just keep binging my content please ;)
@@BobMossNanoTanks on it
@@lostevangeline #1 fan incoming!
The amount if dakt i gotta mix if i do a %75 water change 👀
Salt
Depends on how much water that is lol.
Hey, so question. I have a betta tank. It's about 5 and a half gallons. Recently, I noticed my bettas coloration changing too red around her fins. She is a white betta, so ar first, I assumed it was a happy color change if that makes sense. However, I realized that she started not moving much, not eating and swimming to the top for air. I believe it's the result of ammonia poison, I've been doing frequent water changes and doses of amo lock. I've never had this problem with any of my bettas before, so I was wondering if there is anything u could extra recommend for me to do. Like I said it's the first time I've seen this with these guys.
I think you're doing everything right by the sounds of it. If you have some bacterial product like Seachem Stability, it can help process that ammonia a little faster. Best of luck!
What if it's a brand new fresh water aquarium with new plants and no fish . I've first put tap water added conditioner, Fritz 7 zyme , and Fritz Fishless Fuel and my ammonia is high 2.0 . The other levels are fine (nitrites and nitrates) What should I do ? Should I just wait or is there something I missed? I was trying to speed up the cycling but since it's a brand new tank I just thought I'd ask ? 🤔🐟
wait for it to cycle lol.
@@BobMossNanoTanks Thanks 😊 no need for ghost feeding or adding a few small fish ?
@@scorpio663 you seem to have an ammonia source somehow haha. ghost feeding can help but i would just wait
I’m here for the casual knowledge
Hope you enjoyed!
Mine went up after I did wayer change. Google says bc new water has diffrent ph and releases the ammonia
Do you know if your city uses chlorine or chloramine in the water? If it is chloramine, I know exactly what is happening. When you add you dechlorinator, it seperates the chloramine into it's two parts, chlorine and ammonia. It then binds with the chlorine and neutralizes the ammonia for 48 hours, this is readable on an ammonia drop test. After the two days the ammonia does become toxic again but if you have added it to your cycled tank it should be processed by the bacteria by the time it becomes toxic.
Hopefully that helps! Thanks so much for watching and commenting!
Where's Grogu? Oh, uh, good video.
LOL!! JOKING!!!!!
But, seriously, where's Grogu?
Just forgot to put him in frame for this one. I think he was on my futon as I had just messed around with the tanks lol.
If I ever have too much ammonia in my tank I simply ask it nicely to leave the premises.
I tend to use force lol
When I test my water I have 0.25 ammiona but 0 nirties and 20PMM nitrates idk how I have ammonia.
It could be a false positive? Check again and try to use sunlight and white paper to get the true colour of the water with the testing solution. It's not uncommon to get false positives on the ammonia reading.
Best product to eradicate ammonia from your aquarium. R P Aquatics Ammonia block. Simply amazing product.
I'll have to take a look!
I don’t have a money is back, but I want to know about it
Do the water change and then add the prime to tank or add prime to tank and then do water change? A little confused on that process. Thank you:)
Tbh either works but I add the prime after I've removed water, before the new stuff goes in.
@@BobMossNanoTanks 👍 okay. Thank you so much!
I have the tetra ammonia remover but the instructions are not clear and I don’t know how to use it ☹️
whats the exact product name? i can try to lend a hand
I dont understand why i cant get my ammonia levels to go down, ive been doing water changes, no more than a 50% at a time and i have nutrafin's beneficial bacteria but it never goes down
And I'm barely feeding
my guess would be something is rotting somewhere. did a fish die recently? what substrate are you using and how long has it been cycled for? what is the ammonia level in ppm? what's your pH? I may have more questions to try and help pinpoint the issue for you.
@@BobMossNanoTanks no, a roommate had a Betta in the tinyest container maybe 1litre I didn't know about. They then abandoned it and it sat in that tiny thing for almost a month because they had a lock on their door and I didn't know it was in there. Eventually it became clear they weren't coming back so I forced my way into the room. I thought it was dead but we touched the container and it jumped to motion and scared the heck out of us lol. The following day I went and grabbed some bare basics due to budget constraints but I got beneficial bacteria from nutrafin and some cheap gravel rock and I wanted to get a couple plants BC I knew they would help filter the water a little bit but the lady at the store suggested I wait. So I test my parameters and it always says I have ammonia but I test spring water as well as distilled water and they say there's over 3 ppm of ammonia and it usually says there's between 3 and 6 ppm in the aquarium which I know it wouldn't be able to breath and it would die very quickly. I recently bought seachem prime and stability to switch the microbes and to make the ammonia non toxic but he doesn't seem to be improving really. (I've also given him salt in his aquarium twice) I only got the seachem products a few days ago so I'm going to definitely give him time to see how he responds to this treatment and I have the ammonia drops test coming and my ph is around 8.2-8.4 which I know is a little high but it's really stable there so I don't wanna put him on a ph rollercoaster lol
@@BobMossNanoTanks I also put some PCs of sponge into the spaces on either side of the filter so help give the bacteria somewhere else to live BC the filter is very thin
I would say keep dosing the Prime every other day to neutralize the ammonia and let your filter catch up to handle the bioload. You're essentially just doing a fish-in cycle right now.@@jasonseaward8506
I just did a hydrogen peroxide dose to kill off BBA... the treatment worked, but now my ammonia is reading about .50 ppm. Is this a normal thing to have a small ammonia spike after this type of treatment? I have been dosing prime and stability daily since the spike started the day after BBA treatment. Thanks.
The algae dying off might cause something like that. I would keep an eye on it and if it doesn't go down soon, there may be a larger issue.
Hello! I really needed some help so to give you guys a little background about my tank first.
Temperature 82 degrees. Nitrate testing 0ppm. Ammonia is around 2ppm. Ph around 6.6. Nitrate 0-5ppm.
My main and only problem right now seems to be very high ammonia levels. I have been doing everything I see online about getting the ammonia down as far as waiting a few days after my big about 70% water change then 30% water changes every 2 days. I did make the mistake of feeding my fish a day after that big change. Using ammo lock. Have the API test kit. Using API quick start. I use the Aqueon water conditioner when putting new water in. I just don’t know what to do anymore. It’s really driving me crazy. I just read online that I should do water changes all day if I need to get it to the correct levels. Should I do that? Is there good ammonia and bad ammonia or is it all bad?
I was afraid I would be getting rid of the good bacteria if I did that but I don’t know anymore. The ammonia has been high for over a week now but I haven’t noticed a change in behavior in my fish just yet. I know usually when I do it’s too late. Btw I’ve had the tank for about 1.5 months and I know my other major problem is too many fish. I have 2 angelfish, 4 guppies, 3 Dalmatian Mollys, 2 petricola catfish, 1 German blue ram. I would have never gotten those fish but my wife took my son to the pet store and they got it without me knowing that messed me up big time too but they couldn’t understand that we couldn’t have more. Anyways really struggling any help would be greatly appreciated.
So first thing that comes to mind, is there ammonia in the source water? Dose your dechlorinator and then test it, some dechlorinators actually can create higher ammonia readings by splitting ammonium into ammonia and chlorine. My source water reads about 0.5-1ppm ammonia on any given day, yours could be higher. If this is the case, it would be the root cause of the issue.
That said, if water changes are not helping, I would dose Prime and possibly your Quick Start almost every day to keep the ammonia neutralized and the tank cycling. If the tank's cycle is working properly, 2ppm should take 5-7 days to lower.
If THAT doesn't work, you have something in the tank creating a ton of ammonia. You do have a ton of fish, what size tank? I wouldn't have that bioload in anything less than maybe a 40 gallon off the top of my head. There could possibly be something rotting as well? Some types of wood will do this.
I tried to cover all the bases here. Let me know how it goes and I can try to help further if you're still having issues.
Low ph can stall the nitrifying bacteria and low enough will stop it. You can read articles and studies online about how and why.
Good video
Thank you very much!
How long did it take for everything to become stable again?
Depends on what is causing the ammonia spike but if you can figure it out, the tanks usually come back down to normal within a week.
@@BobMossNanoTanks so with this tank I used a sponge filter from an existing tank and the substrate from it too. Wonder if that caused the spike in ammonia. Before adding the neos. I dosed with Bacter ae and the tank got real cloudy. Took two days for it to clear up. Stupid me, I didn’t test for anything. Figured it was good to go. Added the blue neos in and they were all going crazy. Tested and saw the ammonia was up to from what I read 2 ppm. 0 nitrites and 20 ppm nitrates. I dosed with prime and stability. I’m on day 2 with the dosing. Also added more plants. I posted on your other video. Should I do a water change or let the cycle do it’s thing and continue to dose prime and stability?
i don;t think that would have caused an ammonia spike, if anything it would prevent it. I think you overdosed bacterae before adding the shrimps. It's hard to say, I think I would do one water change and let the cycle continue.
Is a .25 amonnia too much as many say ammonia should be 0
I would double check it in daylight and hold a white piece of paper behind it. It is very easy to misread the 0 as 0.25.
That said, it is TECHNICALLY safe but you don't want it getting much higher, depending on the waters pH it may even be toxic at that concentration. I would dose some Prime to be safe and try to determine what the source of the ammonia is.
Do these fixes only apply to a cycled tank?
Yes, if it's not cycled you SHOULD have an ammonia reading. If you don't, there is a problem.
@@BobMossNanoTanks I started a fish in cycle 11 days ago and have been dosing with prime and stability. I started with 2ppm of ammonia and on 11th day, it's 0.5ppm. Nitrates and nitrites have been 0ppm for all 11 days. How come I haven't been getting any nitrates come day 11? Makes me think the tank ain't fully cycled.
@@alexandermolina8747 even fish in it takes about 4 weeks to properly cycle a fresh filter. If you have plants they may be absorbing some of the ammonia before the filter can get it.
@@BobMossNanoTanks I do have a single plant. I bought it because I thought it would speed up the nitrogen cycle. I will remove it per your advice
well I am fucking panicking :-( I did go out and but stability and prime... I just got two axolotls in today and.. the tank was nice before, but.. shooot
it was good to know that I could add up to 5 times the amount of prime.. I did 2.5...... damn bro. 😕
Don't panic! With Prime and stability they should be fine, you can also do pretty large water changes with axolotls, just match the temperature of the water!
@@BobMossNanoTanks so heat and prime the water before pouring into tank?-new to this
@@user-mo4wt9gk9y Don't heat the water unless you run heaters in your tank. You want it to normalize with the tank water temperature, which for me is just room temp.
I lost over 80 shrimp 😢
Oh no! Did you save the colony?
The tank was wiped clean
@@bradleytomlinson7174 oh no, I'm sorry to hear that!