Massive Ammonia Spike in Established 1yr+ Aquarium

[undel]

I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get an answer here because there are so many factors going on, but here we go.

Today In introduced some new discus to my aquarium. I have a 165 gallon tank that's been running for a year. It has 12 discus that I've had for a year now. I wanted to max out my school, and added 4 discus. I did this today. Everything seemed great. The little guy that was being beat up in quarantine with the other 3 was suddenly in a large school. Fins perked up. Everything looked great. Perfect happy behavior all around.

4 hours ago I notice all my discus near the top of the tank, faces pointed up. I thought they were looking at the FDBW that had hit the surface, but it was very odd. When I went to do my water change, they were STILL doing it. I checked the airstone, the filters. All running. Then I ran water tests.

My ammonia test was a brilliant dark green. 2ppm at least, maybe the next level up. It's never, ever been green like that, not even during the cycling phase a year ago.

I'm rapidly draining as much of the tank water as I can and put some prime in in the meantime.


I don't know what caused this and I want to avoid it in the future. I am astounded. I do water tests weekly. 0ppm ammonia. And that's how it always is! My tank typically runs:

6.8-7.0ph
0.00 ammonia
0.00 nitrite
.05-.20 nitrate


Today it was 6.6 ph
2ppm ammonia
0.00 nitrite
.05-.20 nitrate



More info:
165 gallon tank
Fluval FX5 cannister filter
Aquatop CF400UV UV cannister filter
Airstone
1 vortech power head. (I run it on low, but during water changes turn it to high to scoot all the debree into an easier position to vacuum.
There are 12 corydoras, 15 cardinal tetras, 8 kuhli loaches, and 2 bristlenose plecos. (I realize that with the discus, the tank is just slightly over max capacity, but I do 30-50% water changes every other day and with the filters thought it would be okay...)




Things that are new:

• 3 weeks ago I switched out my substrate from a caribsea gravel for plants to pool filter sand. I thought that the bacteria in the filters and in the gravel behind my 3d background would be enough not to swing things. My tests indicated this worked out?
• Today I added 4 discus. Not enough to swing the ammonia so rapidly
• 3 days ago I added the vortech power head. Today halfway through the day (before they started deep breathing) I took the foam liner off of it which had picked up a lot of debree and washed it throughly. It did release a bunch of debree when I took it out. Could this be my culprit?
• They are doing construction on the street outside my neighborhood. Could it be in the city water? I ran a test on today's water and it seems fine. That doesn't mean it was fine yesterday.
• I waaaaaay overfed beefheart today. I wanted to see the new additions get some mouthfuls. They are 4.5 inchers, and the rest of my discus are 6-7.5 inches. I fed them the beefheart about 9 hours ago, which was 5 hours before they started acting funny. A lot was left in the bottom, but I didn't worry about it because I figured I'd get it with the water change tonight. Could beefheart foul the water that completely? I gave them 4 frozen cubes of it. About half went uneaten.
• Both of my filters seem fine and I can't find any dead fish or snails that could be fouling the water. That's not to say that we couldn't have lost power or air got in the filter and it stalled and restarted after the bacteria had died. But I have TWO filters, so I'd think the water couldn't go from 0 to 2ppm ammonia that quickly! I just don't know what to think!

Any red flags jumping out here?

If there's no smoking gun, I guess I'm just going to test my tap water before any water change. It's been so reliable that I took its stability for granted.

[undel]

Update:
I have done a 50% water change.
I put prime in at a 4 caps per 50 gallon rate to neutralize the ammonia.
Ran a test. It's now registering at 1ppm ammonia (which is still way, way too high)

I'll do another water change in 12 hours. I don't want to do a full water change because the PH from my tap is 7.2-7.4, while the ph in my tank is 6.8-7.0 Didn't want to swing the PH and hurt them that way. The prime should keep things neutralized.






Another consideration: I read that chloramine can read as ammonia in another post in the forum. If there was a bunch of that in my tap water, it could also explain my problems. When I ater change, I only put in enough prime to neutralize a typical amount of chemicals, 1 capful per 50 gallons. The fish started acting funky at around 24 hours after their last water change. So maybe the prime wore off or wasn't enough?


I'm kinda hoping it was ammonia. If it was chloramine, it probably killed off my bacteria to boot. There's so many factors!




I'm thinking more and more this is my water supply. Sadly, I can really only age a small amount of water, which I do for my hospital tank in the basement. My main tank is in my living room, 40 feet from any sink and there's just no place to store an aging barrel that's not an eyesore. I realize the benefits of aging water, but it's just not something I can easily do in my home for anything but my basement tanks. I think I'm going to simply have to test my tap water before every water change to make sure it's safe. I grew complacent. :-/

[brewmaster15]

Im guessing that you had a perfect storm. 3 WEEKS ago you removed your substrate. From that point on your tank was having a minicycle.Thats a huge surface area of biological media you removed. Your water changes of 30%-50% everyother day probably barely cut it and if you had not been checking your ammonia from when you removed the substrate to when you did 3 weeks latter you probably had issues starting undetected. Then you added 4 fish significantly increasing the ammonia levels followed by over feeding with beefheart.

The short is you probably want to feed sparsely for a few days,really bump up the water changes and keep an eye on things.Your tank should recover soon enough but watch for a nitrite spike to follow the ammonia. Salt at 1 tablespoon per 10 gals should block its uptake and help heal any ammonia burns on the gills.

hth,
Al

[undel]

Thank you for the reply and advice. An actual ammonia spike to me is preferable to a chloramine spike that has nuked all my bacteria altogether!

Newbie question then: I've always used precycled media before and built my tanks up from small amounts of fish prior to this. Never had a minicycle before that went above .25. Is a 2.0 ammonia swing possible on a 165 gallon with 16 discus, 12 corycats, 8 kuhli loaches, 15 cardinals, and 2 bristlenose when a 50% water change was done 24 hours earlier? I still had about 3 square feet of non-removed gravel behind my 3d background and 2 cannister filters. (though now that you mention it, on Monday I gave the fluval a good cleanout (in aquarium water) and Thursday I did the aquatop.

If it sounds like a plausible swing, seems like I've got my answer. I'll head up to the store today to get some live bacteria to hopefully boost this up quicker. It won't cycle my tank for me, but any help I can get to make this a smoother ride!

[brewmaster15]

I can only give you a best guess here but given all your parameters and all the info you shared, Id say yes...highly possible.

Store bought bacteria may help but most of it is designed to be used by people that dont do water changes.. it stays in the water column and slowly colonizes substrate. Im leary of any product that encourages you not to change your water when theres a biological filtration issue so be sure to read the instructions carefully.

Your best friend here is lots of water changes until the tank stabilizes.


The only other factor that I would think possible is the substrate you have left released anaerobic gasses...that would cause what you saw as well. People do.run into this when removing substrate. I didnt mention this yet as You hadnt said anything about substrate being left.
al

[undel]

I have one of those 3d backgrounds, but I put all my plumbing behind it. So there's 3 inches by 6 feet of substrate left behind the "wall", as pulling it out was too much trouble. Re-mathing, I guess that's only 1.5 square feet of substrate, so... probably not enough. The bulk of the substrate (15 inches x 6 feet) was all removed 3 weeks ago. I also pulled all my fish for 3 days when I did this and did 3x 100% water changes. In retrospect, this may have killed all my bacteria. I really overestimated what as in the filters, and I didn't feed it ammonia during the no-fish-tons-of-new-water-substrate-switch . I was trying to hard to make sure my substrate switch was safe. Looking back, kinda silly.

I was so excited to move my new guys from the quarantine tank to the "big stable" one. Haha.


Roger on the nitrifying bacteria bottle. I didn't consider that it wouldn't immediately adhere to a surface.

[Kyla]

I am planning to bring my basement 180g upstairs and when the change happens I will still be aging it's water in a barrel in a 150gal barrel in the basement and then pumping it up through the floor/wall into my tank. I've heard of other ppl doing this as well, as long as the pump has enough power to push the water vertically.

[undel]

That sounds like an awesome setup!

I tested my water again, and the ammonia is slowly climbing. Theoretically the prime is keeping this in check so it's not toxic for 24 hours, but I think this confirms mini-cycle or anaerobic gasses over my tap water having a single bad day

I did another water change to get it down to .5ppm. (which is still too high).

I also put in some live nitrifying bacteria... which is likely a waste of money and will all be sucked out of my aquarium tonight with the water change. :-/ HOwever, the bottle has enough in it for me to do 5 water changes with it and still top off my bacteria, so maybe it'll do something small to help.

I added the recommended salt as well. I don't know if it's the mini cycle or if I moved into the room in a way they didn't like, but everyone spooked this morning when I went to do the second water change. My heckle cross scraped himself up good, so salt is doubly good in this instance.

Thanks again for the advice. It helps to have some clarity with what could be happening.

[bluelagoon]

You could try not feeding your fish for a few days or at least cut way back until things improve.

[Kyla]

Do u have lots of bioballs in your fx5 or other media in the centre of the trays for growing BB on? (Just making sure u have more than just the outside sponge set in the actual filter)

[undel]

Thank you for the advice.

I agree no feeding or extremely light feeding is the way to go.

There are ceramic tubes on both central areas in the fluval that are supposed to house bacteria in the porous surface. Tha aquatop has bio balls along with ceramic media tubes. Aside from 2 100g pouches of purigen, I have no chemical filtration. Would carbon or additional purigen in both filters help the water be more stable while I rebuild my biofilter?

I also gave my aquarium and both filters a good sniff. No sewage smell that me or my husband can detect, so that’s hopefull.

Discus are shedding their slime coats. I changed too much water and they are not enjoying the ph swing. I brought up the 7 5 gallon buckets from the basement and am aging right in my living room. It’s not a permanent solution, and is unsightly. But if I’m going to do 50% a every day while managing this cycle, at least a little bit of that water will be aged now.

[undel]

I think I have a situation.

I say that my tank is normally 6.8-7.0ph.

After my water change it was 7.2ish

It is now 6.4ish

This happened in the span of 8 hours, since my 11AM water change. (it is now 7:40)

1/2 of my fish are on the bottom, one is laying on its side.

I assume the swing is due to ammonia being consumed. Is my best bet now to just swing the whole tank and do a 90% change so that the massive amount of ammonia that was in there is out of there and the acidic swing won't be able to happen as rapidly?

I can also move all (or half) of my discus down to my 72 gallon quarentine tank. The PH there is 7.2, and has been stable for several days, because I was actually testing that one due to the new guys. Maybe long enough for the swing to happen?



I'm afraid I'm going to lose them at this point.

Unless I hear otherwise, I'm moving all of the discus that were laying down to the 72 gallon (7 discus) to recover. I'm beginning to drain the water. I also found a 15 gallon storage tote that I can fill with water to begin aging, bringing my capacity up to 50 gallons. I'm only going to do 25% water change unless it's agreed that 90% is the best plan. I've never had PH issues like this. I'm out of my depth. Any advice appreciated. This is terrible.

[undel]

I performed a 25% water change and moved the 6 worst off fish to my 72 gallon cycled quarentine tank. I replaced the water with 8 hour aged water, as that’s the best I had available. Aging more now. Will test water in 20 minutes

[Jack L]

I am planning to bring my basement 180g upstairs and when the change happens I will still be aging it's water in a barrel in a 150gal barrel in the basement and then pumping it up through the floor/wall into my tank. I've heard of other ppl doing this as well, as long as the pump has enough power to push the water vertically.

i just use a basic sump pump to bring it from my basement.

[Jack L]

I am planning to bring my basement 180g upstairs and when the change happens I will still be aging it's water in a barrel in a 150gal barrel in the basement and then pumping it up through the floor/wall into my tank. I've heard of other ppl doing this as well, as long as the pump has enough power to push the water vertically.

i just use a basic sump pump to bring it from my basement.