cycled or not cycled??

[daopeter]

Hi everyone, I got a little bit of a problem. I have a 55gal tank with 20 angels from quarter to half dollars size. The tank has been up for about 3 months and was cycled. However I just checked again yesterday and my ammonia is around 1-1.5ppm. Nitrite 0, nitrate 0, ph 6.5, tds 90, temp 82. I have a Penguin 350 and a sponge filter running on this tank. Should I be worried? I was reading around and to my understanding ammonia is supposed to be at 0. I do feed a lot though, not sure if that is the cause. I feed about 4x day. At what level of ammonia will it start to effect the fish? Any thoughts will be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Peter.

[Ardan]

If you use prime, you may be getting a false reading. do you have chloramines in the tap water?

At this level if correct, it will affect the fish.
Check the tap water for ammonia also.
Do more wc's if there is ammonia in the tank., also only clean the filter with used tank water.


Try another test kit to verify results. could be the test kit.

hth
Ardan

[Graham]

Peter, ammonia should always be at 0.0ppm but at a pH of 6.5,the NH3 that's in the tank is not affecting the fish,as it's all in the form of NH4.

As Ardan mentioned double check those readings...Nessler style ammonia test kits can give false readings when used with products that can bind up ammonia

G

[daopeter]

Hi, thanks for your input. I did get a new test kit to test for ammonia. The reading is the same as before. I checked for ammonia i tap water, reading is 0. The ph in the tank is about 7. So I guess I will try to cut down on the feeding to 2x day. Maybe the tank is underfiltered?