Mysterious Ammonia Spike

[CammieTime]

Hi All,

At first feeding today I fed my 6 discus (75 gallon tank) about twice as much as usual of freeze dried blackworms (1 full square instead of half). I wanted to see if I was under feeding them. 5 hours later I had a 0.5ppm ammonia spike. Fish were huddled in corner with clamped fins. What gives?

Tank was cycled, so can half a cube of FDBWs more than normal really cause ammonia spike in 5 hours? Only other thing I can think of is that I discovered that my two Hydro V sponge filters and 110AC on the tank were kinda dirty, so I cleaned them when I did the emergency water change. Can dirty filters cause an ammonia spike?

The only other variable I can think of is that last week I was gone for 4 days (came back 8 days ago) and the fish did not get fed for that time and the tank is recycling since the bio-load dropped so much while I was gone due to no food for 4 days.

Fish are fine now after water change.

What caused the spike?

[Filip]

Its hard to belive that your fully cycled filtes had failed just because youve add a bit of extra food .
Do you use dechlore during WCs and how much do you change during a WC ?
Maybe both the amount of trapped debris on your dirty filters along with the overfeeding contributed to this ammonia incident .

[DJW]

Uneaten food doesn't release ammonia until it decomposes. It has to get worked over by bacteria or fungi before the proteins in the food are broken down to form ammonia. Its a gradual process, not sudden.

[brewmaster15]

whats your pH?

id check your nitrites . Its likely the extra food was coincidental and you already had biological filter issues..

al

[CammieTime]

whats your pH?

id check your nitrites . Its likely the extra food was coincidental and you already had biological filter issues..

al

You are right. My filters are not cycled. They went haywire after I was gone on a long business trip and the fish were not fed for a week, dropping the bio-load considerably. By the way, my fish love your bio-pigment plus FDBW's. I did my first order last week.