hadj2887

I bought 3 Bosemani Rainbowfish over the weekend and now my water is all cloudy I believe because of bacterial bloom. What really concerns me though is that my ammonia levels have skyrocketed to 4 PPM! Is this normal for bacteria bloom? Id figure that at 4 ppm my fish would all be dead, but not only are they all still alive, they aren't acting the slightest bit different or affected. I have been doing daily water changes and using a product called Ammo Lock. I'm concerned because I did not expect the ammonia to climb this high and it still seems to be getting higher. How long is this going to last?

Butterfly

The beneficial bacteria in your tank are trying to catch up to the extra load of the three new fish. Continue doing the extra water changes that is definately a lethal level of ammonia. What method of testing are you using? How long has the tank been set up? How big is it? and what other fish do you have in the tank? Sorry for all teh questions
Carol

hadj2887

Its a 20 gallon tank. In addition to the new rainbowfish I have another rainbowfish, 4 zebra danios and a female guppy. Its been set up for about 2 months now, and seemed to be fully cycled before I added the rainbows. I'm using the liquid tests so it should be pretty accurate. I expected the ammonia to go up a little due to bacterial bloom, but not this much. Whats baffling me is that despite the fact the ammonia is so high, my fish are not only not showing any signs of distress, but they seem to be thriving.

sgould

There are a couple of possibilities as to why the ammonia does not seem to be bothering them.

1) You mentioned you have been using ammo lock. That will "bind up" the toxic ammonia so it does not hurt the fish. I suspect this is
what you are actually experiencing.
2) If your pH is below 7, ammonia takes a less toxic form...meaning it takes a lot more of it to get dangerous. The flip side is that if
your pH is higher than 7, the ammonia actually becomes even more toxic, and it takes less of it to harm the fish.

Keep up the water changes. As with the original cycle, this could take a few weeks to work completely through, so keep a close eye on the fish and test regularly.