Hi guys, I’ve been trying to get this 6 gallon tank to work but I’m at my wits end and desperately need help. One month ago, I rescaped this 6 gallon tank, and added some clown killifish. I had kept the sponge filter in water so I had thought the cycle was maintained, and I even seeded from my cycled 15 gallon tank (squeezed the cycled tank’s sponge filter 10 times and added the mulm/bacteria to the tank. As it was reading 0ppm ammonia, I added 3 clown killifish, but a few days later, I noticed that the male was not looking good. I tested immediately and got 1 ppm ammonia, which freaked me out. I have since been dosing seachem prime and been doing 30 percent water changes, but the ammonia has not gone down. I even seeded again and tried running a second sponge filter in my cycled tank for a week before adding, but nothing works and it is still 1 ppm ammonia. Im truly at my wits end, I had thought it was rotting plants/mulm, but I removed all that I could as you can see and it has done nothing. ph is 7 and temp is 75 degrees F, please any help would be appreciated, im just worried about my fish.
Posted by DoRoRuRo
2 Comments
if ur ammonia is truly at 1ppm doing a 50% water change should reduce it to 0.5 which is within the acceptable range if u have done this and are still reading 1ppm i think its likely a false positive
when you are checking for a cycled tank you should dose the ammonia up to 2ppm and if it comes down in 24-48 hours it means ur cycled and ready for fish. bottled ammonia is a life saver. also bacteria lives ON surfaces so squeezing water from a sponge that had good bacteria on it did nearly nothing. for the future, take the whole sponge and stick it in the new tank.