Fish & Tank Care : Ammonia in Fish Tank Cycling

[lomaxbozo]

how ca i reduce ammonia from my tank ?

[lomaxbozo]

how ca i eliminate ammonia from my tank ?

[PaNdeM0niuM]

she wears the SAME red top in EVERY video !

[prwnage93]

@PaNdeM0niuM she probably made them all in one go

[bumblebee121100]

I have a lot of ammonia in my fish tank and it killed 6of my platys fish how can I remove ammonia in my fish tank please help me I don't want to lose all my fish

[jimstah21]

gosh you are annoying

[Implacable17]

thumbs up if you counted the drops with her :P

[MrThegb]

Show some respect y'all to Kristen Palin! 'Pleco Barbie' can take out a whole tank of catfish at 5 feet with a 12-bore .... or a bottle of detergent.. or even a 'how-to' video.

[MegaEdwinb]

i have a new arowana on my new fish tank.I have a problem now.the ammonia level now is o.5 ppm.i really need your help.i fed my fish gold fish,sometimes pellets or dried shrimp.i recently changes the fish water every 5 days.i use drinking water on my fish tank.pls let me know what was wrong with my system.thank you.i am so nervous now.

[nzullo]

Wow, she didn't explain anything about Nitrites and Nitrates. She has an entire test kit for a reason. After your ammonia peaks it drops. This is when nitrites will appear. When the ammonia and nitrites read 0 ppm ur good to go.

[MegaEdwinb]

@nzullo Ineed your help ? what your suggetion ? 50 % water change already.

[Link4681]

ur an expert? something must be wrong with u, just like the damn "experts" in this thing. 4 words: expertvillage is a joke

[fortgreene31]

my ammonia is bad in my tank. I use ammo lock i change my water 20-30% a couple of times. My tank went cloudy a couple of times. Now my tank is clear my ph is good but my ammonia is real high. Since i use ammo lock i was told that reading the test it will show up ammonia still.

[fortgreene31]

thanks for the info. I have 5 red bellies piranhas that are 3 inches each. I had my piranhas for about 2 weeks. I 'am having problem with my water. The ph is good but i have ammonia bad. I did several water change. I have bacteria in my filter i don't feed them a lot. please help me out.

[tize79]

@fortgreene31 size of tank? if the tank is too big for 5 piranhas get more that way they will feed the bacterias and they will be healthly cleaning your tank =) i got about 31 fish in a 25 Galon and its cristal clear =)

2 angelfish 4 Golden gouramis 14 black neon tetras 2 blue ramirezis and the rest are corys =) oh and a pleco with 15 cm

[chichirinuriko20]

Most tetras are not hardy.

Hardly species like Paties and zebra danios are all good for a cycling tank.

[SweixNOR]

get laid

[orange1336]

im a beginner on this and i am SOO confused!!

[AnnabellaGally]

OMG!! me too!!! :(

[summersweetie21]

why the fuck is she saying everything she is doing," I will pick up the bottle put the cap on shake it a lil bit take the cap off set it down again" WTF we arn't blind you dumb fuck!

[Youngtegger]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

[Rediahs]

omg, and she said don't do water changes... you NEED to do water changes! The bacteria won't mind water changes, they will still grow exponentially, eating all the ammonia they can find, because there will always be ammonia in there until it's cycled, whether you change the water or not. Your fish WILL mind if you don't do water changes! They'll probably die.

[ctenophor]

she daoes over a 75% water change weekly, er something.

she recomends starter fish, which is horrible, but i still dont agree with water changes.

occasionaly, if you need to remove excess nutrients, its ok, but doing it regularly is detrimental, especialy if your doing it unnescacerily. now if set up your aquarium correctly, your nutrient levels would njot be as high.

[Rediahs]

What are you talking about? Regular water changes are essential for the health of your fish. Water changes remove excess nitrates, which are the end result of the nitrogen cycle and are still somewhat harmful to fish in high levels.

Water changes also replace minerals in the water that get absorbed by the fish passing water, and any plants you may have in there.

[Rediahs]

And water changes are ESPECIALLY important if you are cycling with fish!! The ammonia will quickly become toxic and fish will die!!!

[ctenophor]

performing a water change while cycling with fish, is redundant. you add the fish for the nutruents, then, instead of allowing the tanks to adjust and for bacteria to grow, you remove the nutrients.

that just makes your cycle last longer.

cycling with out fish, removes the wory, and the unnescecary loss of fish.

[Rediahs]

You're right that fishless cycling is best.

However, to cycle with-fish, you've got it all wrong.

Fish create ammonia. Constantly. It's not a nutrient, it's a poison. When you have a tank that is not yet cycled, the bacteria cannot eat the ammonia fast enough and it quickly rises to lethal levels. THIS IS WHY YOU MUST PERFORM FREQUENT WATER CHANGES.

No matter if you change the water or not there will always be plenty of ammonia! Might as well keep your fish healthy through it!

[Rediahs]

It doesn't make the cycle last longer, bacteria can't eat all the ammonia and that's why it's building up and killing the fish and making them suffer.

Say you have 1 ppm of ammonia in a cycling tank with fish. Change half the water and you will now have 0.5 ppm of ammonia. The bacteria don't care if there's 10 ppm or 1 ppm or 0.1 ppm, as long as there is still some, they aren't finished eating it! Excess ammonia won't make the cycle any faster.

[Rediahs]

And once you reach the phase of the cycle where there is nitrite in the water, it takes a very long time for the lethal nitrite to begin to be processed! If you just let it sit around in the water it will rise to crazy levels and only the hardiest fish will be able to withstand it, and they will not be very happy!

There are no "nutrients" that fish create that are desirable for fish. Fish create wastes and consume minerals. Fresh tap water replaces minerals and removes wastes. End of story.

[ctenophor]

look, ALL nutrients can becoma a poison in high enough levels.

now, if you tank has levels of ammonia that are consistantly 80 then the bacteria will adjust to that. if the nutrient level is 80, then 40, then 5 then 36 then 80, how is you bacteria supposed to adjust? right, slower than if one had taken the fishless cycle.

fished cycles are inhumane, certainly, you must agree.

fished cycles must kill thousands apon thousands of fish a year.

[Rediahs]

No, ammonia is a poison in very very small levels to all fish. Any amount of ammonia in the water is poisonous and does them no good. The only thing that likes ammonia is bacteria, nobody else likes ammonia. It's not a nutrient.

Also nothing will live in a tank with 80 ppm of ammonia, holy shit :s

Fish-in-cycle is inhumane yes of course. But you can greatly ease it by doing frequent water changes and it WILL NOT SLOW THE CYCLE, no matter how much you remove there is always more ammonia..

[ctenophor]

why dont you look up the definiton of the word, nutrient, because in your response you just proved that ammonia is a nutrient

and, in a tank i know of, a guy had 65 ppm ammonia, and his fish were still living, allbe it disease ridden, but a live.

i beleieve that i am performing cycles differently than you.

i am under the assuption that a cycle can be employed to meat the needs of a system, by increaseing the ammount of bacteria, by increasing the nutrient levels in the begining.

[Rediahs]

No, increasing the "nutrient" levels, as you call them, in the beginning, does not help the cycle whatsoever. Because there is excess ammonia, the bacteria aren't done eating it.

At the END of a cycle, when the bacteria have formed a large colony, extra ammonia will make the colony more robust, but any excess ammonia will always be just that - excess, the bacteria haven't eaten it yet, so it's irrelevant to the bacteria.

[Rediahs]

In a fish-in cycle, the situation you are in is that in which there are not enough bacteria to eat all of the ammonia. Bacteria do not "adjust" to ammonia, they eat it, all of it that's available, until it's all gone.

The bacteria are always working as hard as they can to process ammonia and nitrites. The situation in a fish-in cycle is such that there is too much ammonia, and later nitrites, for the small colony of bacteria to eat quickly enough to reduce it to zero.

[Rediahs]

You need to do water changes in order to keep the levels down because there aren't enough bacteria to process the wastes.

Once there ARE enough bacteria to process the wastes, they will eat them immediately and there is no harm in doing water changes because you aren't removing anything the bacteria want, they have eaten all they can, all the time.

You will never "slow down" a cycle by doing water changes because the bacteria eat all they can.

[Rediahs]

They don't work more efficiently in high levels of ammonia or nitrites. They just can't eat it all yet. And once they can eat it, they will eat it immediately. You can't slow a cycle by changing the water in a fish-in cycle because fish produce ammonia constantly.

Do you understand?

[ctenophor]

1. exactly!!!

2. never mind the word slow down, it was porely used.

if you are using a cycle to create a biofilter, is it not in your best interest to make that biofilter as strong as possible?

well, if your biofilter has a higher level of nutrients to startoff with, than it can handle a system with more nutrients.

you always hear of people qho constantly have nutrient problems, but if their biofilter had been set up properly, than that would have never happened.

[ctenophor]

if ones biofilter can handle 80 ppm, for example, than, if your fish produce 100 ppm ammonia, and your filter is able to remove 75% of that before it dissolves into the water, than your nutrients will be 0.

now, if you know that you will be adding a large fish to star of with, would it not be advisable to utilize as much bacteria as possible!

[Rediahs]

You want to build your biofilter to that level but you can't do it instantly! It takes time! Meanwhile you don't want to have excess ammonia that the bacteria haven't eaten, to the best extent possible... that's why we add up to 5 ppm of ammonia, until it is processed, then we top it up with more once it has reached zero... instead of adding 100 ppm all at once and waiting until it's all been processed!

[ctenophor]

well, hear we will have to agree to disagree.

i have looked and found no credible (none at all actualy) sources to support the claim that ammonia above 8 ppm inhibits growth, however i have talked with other aquarist who i trust to be well educated in this field, not that you aren't, and the consensus is that it doesn't have any detrimental effects.

on the other hand, weak cycles are detrimental, or rather( because i know how much you enjoy twisting my words! lol) are less effective.

[ctenophor]

i would just like to bring up a point ,as well.

this has little to do with limiting factors.

however it has everything to do with bacteria breeding. when their is an excess of something, breeding occurs.

with bacteria, the breeding rates can be increased, depending on the amount of excess nutrients( i know this first hand i did an experament involving this)

now it may be a different case with nitrosphiras and nitrosomonas, i have yet to see a study, though.

[jawsflounderace]

my ammonia test is over 8.... o_0 are you saying that's good?

[ctenophor]

if you are just starting your cycle, if not...

get rid of your fish and inverst before they all die, and get a better filter/vacume substrate/ bigger tank/get rid of some of your fish.....

[Rediahs]

No. At the beginning of a cycle you want LOW levels of ammonia if there are fish in there.  If there aren't any fish, it doesn't matter how much ammonia there is as long as there is some. You could have 1 ppm or 100 ppm of ammonia in the system and the bacteria would still be multiplying at the exact same rate (well actually they would be slower in the 100 ppm range, anything higher than 8 ppm inhibits the growth of beneficial bacteria and encourages the wrong type of bacteria to develop.)

[ctenophor]

okay, now i am confused.

because i have asked people before, and they have stated clearly that te higher your ammonia in the beggining the more bacteria you will have. if their is always 1 ppm, the bacteria will grow slower than 80 ppm.

do you think you couls find me a link that supports this?

and with the detrimental bacteria growth.

what is the genus?

i can't figure out why high ammonia would encourage ammonia eating bacteria to grow.

[Rediahs]

It doesn't matter how high your ammonia is in the beginning... after all you are going to add more ammonia once the bacteria have processed it all the way to zero, so how could it matter? You're constantly supplying them with ammonia, that's the point... Higher ammonia in the beginning does aboslutely nothing for anybody!

Nitrospira and Nitrosomonas are the nitrifying bacteria common in cycled aquariums. Nitrosomonas process ammonia into nitrite. Nitrospira process nitrite into nitrate.

[Rediahs]

Also since the bacteria are eating (processing) the ammonia as fast as they can, how can excess ammonia help? It doesn't make any sense. The bacteria care about availability of ammonia to process (consume, eat!), not the concentration!

There is an article where they proved the cycle goes at the same rate no matter how much ammonia was in the tank.. and actually took longer for higher concentrations! I have been trying to find it whenever I think of it, but I can't seem to find it again.

[ctenophor]

articles can be hard to find, i have been lokking for some myself for a while as well.

if you do find it, please let me see it, pm me the link, or something, i enjoy being proved wrong, it just gives me a new perspective.

[ctenophor]

have you found the study yet????

[ctenophor]

no, but it will make it more efficient.

[ctenophor]

i said, occasionaly, fi your nutrients are high, not never, even if nitrates are at 80!

yes, water changes can be useful for replensihing trace elements, but on a whole, performing unnescasary water changes just because is useless.

and if you must do water changes constantly then you need to feed less, get less fish, or upgrade filtration.

[Rediahs]

She didn't even do it right - the ammonia test doesn't require you to shake between adding solutions 1 and 2, you only shake after.

[ctenophor]

do not use starter fish!

it is just as affective, if not more so, to throw in some fish food and let it decompose.

[stranger692k]

wtf, this wasn't helpful either. What a joke this series is

[smoothjcee]

HARDY HMMMMMMM................

[smoothjcee]

SHE LOOKS LIKE A DAMN PUFFER FISH

[smoothjcee]

I BET SHE CAN'T SPELL EXPERT.........

[krackersyummy]

OMG her voice is sooooo frikkin annoyin

[nanilinda123]

thx

[golomasterg]

lol all you did was repeat what was on the test kit box!

[kbryon]

where do you get these people m8?

[rocko168]

otra ves la pinche gorda puerca q asco.

[bangtizzy]

.... that's it?