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266 Posts
This may be a bit long, but here goes.
I set up my 20g about 2 months ago (March 11th) and I used Tetra SafeStart to jumpstart the cycle. For about the first 6 weeks I only had 3 snails, a betta, and a bunch of live plants in there. Naturally I didn't expect to see nitrites or nitrates for a while because of the plants, but I kept seeing ammonia (about .25) reading on my API freshwater kit. And I mean it never changed from that reading, from right after a water change to right before a water change. My tap water ammonia is about 1ppm, so I know there are some BB in there, but I'm surprised the ammonia is still reading.
2 weeks ago I added 9 endlers, so that is an added load to the tank. There has to be BB since the ammonia hasn't gone up and nobody has suffered new tank syndrome. But the ammonia keeps reading .25ppm every time I check. I thought maybe I had a dud test kit, so I brought a water sample to the pet store. They used one of those sticks and lo and behold the ammonia read between 0 and .5ppm (they don't have .25 on the sticks).
I've kept adding 1 drop of prime per gallon every day since I'm still getting ammonia readings. I realize that when I am getting these readings the ammonia isn't toxic, but I'm concerned that there is ammonia registering at all. I don't have distilled water to test against.
What's going on? Am I fully cycled? Should I stop the prime? Shouldn't the ammonia be going down to 0?
I don't want to hurt my babies.
I set up my 20g about 2 months ago (March 11th) and I used Tetra SafeStart to jumpstart the cycle. For about the first 6 weeks I only had 3 snails, a betta, and a bunch of live plants in there. Naturally I didn't expect to see nitrites or nitrates for a while because of the plants, but I kept seeing ammonia (about .25) reading on my API freshwater kit. And I mean it never changed from that reading, from right after a water change to right before a water change. My tap water ammonia is about 1ppm, so I know there are some BB in there, but I'm surprised the ammonia is still reading.
2 weeks ago I added 9 endlers, so that is an added load to the tank. There has to be BB since the ammonia hasn't gone up and nobody has suffered new tank syndrome. But the ammonia keeps reading .25ppm every time I check. I thought maybe I had a dud test kit, so I brought a water sample to the pet store. They used one of those sticks and lo and behold the ammonia read between 0 and .5ppm (they don't have .25 on the sticks).
I've kept adding 1 drop of prime per gallon every day since I'm still getting ammonia readings. I realize that when I am getting these readings the ammonia isn't toxic, but I'm concerned that there is ammonia registering at all. I don't have distilled water to test against.
What's going on? Am I fully cycled? Should I stop the prime? Shouldn't the ammonia be going down to 0?
I don't want to hurt my babies.