Help Please

[dab4u2]

Okay, I am not exactly a new hobbyists but I think I certainly made an amateur mistake. I installed an ASM protein skimmer a couple of months ago and I thought I could get away with feeding a little bit more and not have to worry about it. WRONG!!! My levels have spiked and my water is cloudy. I am using Prime to detoxify the ammonia and nitites to keep my fish from stressing out . I also did about a 35% water change to try and help the situation. All of that being said I know how it all happend. What I am confused about is that the nitrites appear to down back to 0 but the ammonia is staying around .5. Nnitrates are around 10. Does this make any sense? How can the nitrites have dropped to 0 and the ammonia still be up? Fortunately my fish are all doing very well but I am concerned about getting the ammonia back down quickly. All suggestions are appreciated.

 

[snipe]

I think you have it backwords
When something dies or decomposes in the tank
Amonia comes first
Then nitrites
Then nitrates
So if the amonia is going up now the others wont go up until later.

 

[1journeyman]

Sounds to me like you still have decaying matter in your tank. That would cause the ammonia to still be registering.
If I am understanding your post... it makes sense to me. You had everything at 0. So, basically, your bacteria was balanced. Then you added more food. This threw off the bacterial balance. Now your bacteria is behind in breaking down ammonia.

 

[dab4u2]

Actually snipe, the nitrites did go up for a few days as well but now they have fallen back down. I just expected them to stay up as long as the ammonia is staying up.

 

[snipe]

Either something is still decaying in the tank and will be gone soon or your test kit is giving a false positive "it has been known to happen many times".