spike in ammo reading

[jim LI]

the tank cycled as a qt tank. it has been up for about 4 months now. i went from 1 to start off the qt tank with to 3 fish with white poop in my main tank in 3 weeks..the qt tank was not cycled at that time. .i added the other 2 fish from lfs to cut down on the aggression...the tank cycled over a month ago. i was and am doing 75% w/c daily.

aged and tank ph - 7.6.. i have never tested for kh.
tank temp - 83

the tank seems to have stabilized now.. 0 ammo reading for 2 straight days, doing 75% w/c with Safe.

i have no idea what caused the ammo to spike so rapidly,

[DJW]

Fish are healthy, active, and eating, so I have not been worried, but am very curious as to the cause. The tank I took media from gets the same water and is kept at 82 degrees. That tank is heavily planted and has been running for over a year.

I don't have an answer, just a few thoughts.

When you put an extra filter into an established tank it gets seeded, so it has a head start over a sterile filter, but the number of beneficial bacteria won't be very high, at least in the short term. The main established filter will continue doing the bulk of the work. When you move the seeded filter to another tank it needs to build up capacity. But I would still expect the mini-cycle to spike nitrite at some point since the nitrite-consuming bacteria are said to multiply slower. I'm not sure why you didn't see it.

I finally assumed it was the Prime leading to the reading since I was using it to detoxify the ammonia between WC

If there is chloramine in your tap water, Prime breaks it up and the ammonia component remains. You can test chloraminated tap water with an API ammonia test and it will show the ammonia. Its not a "false positive" unless you are expecting the Prime to up and make the ammonia vanish. It doesn't vanish, it just gets bound by the Prime into a non-toxic form, and the test still shows it, especially right after a big WC. Chloramine, if you have it, increases the amount of ammonia the filter has to handle - beyond what the fish produce. Same with any water that contains ammonia. Prime changes the nature of the ammonia, it doesn't change the testing of it when the test is a salicylate test like API.

I also have had a Seachem Ammonia Alert in for a couple weeks that never reads other than yellow. Either the Prime is doing it's job or the low pH is keeping the Ammonia in ionized form.

The Seachem ammonia alert is really sluggish at your pH. It only registers NH3 and at pH 6.7 only 1/300th of the total ammonia is in the NH3 form. That means the alert won't show any hint of ammonia until the total ammonia gets to about 6 ppm, long after a cycle problem has started. The higher your pH, the more alert the alert becomes.

[LJSmith]

Thanks. I too am baffled by the lack of nitrites. I may have missed them if they only spiked for a day or two.

I'm going to keep up with the WC and monitor the ammonia. I have been rinsing sponges, wiping down glass, etc. I wonder if that it limiting the BB growth along with the large WC