Didgeridoo

Hey there again, folks! As stated in other threads, my 20 gallon tank finished fishless cycling a few days ago, and I added six panda corys. The panda corys are still doing great, but I now have a small problem; slightly elevated ammonia levels.

Today I tested ammonia at .25 PPM. I did an immediate water change and brought it back down to zero, but now I'm a bit worried. Is this a mini cycle? My other readings are 0 ppm nitrite, and 10 ppm nitrate.

If it is a mini cycle, what's the best way to bring the corys through it safely? And what might cause the elevated readings? I think I may have been overfeeding them. Might that have done it?

As always, thanks for reading, and any advice or comments would be greatly appreciated!

Dozey

Over feeding could certainly be a part of the problem but the likely cause is that you just added too many fish at one. Generally it is recommended that you only add 2 or 3 fish at a time.

Daily water changes and conditioner should get your fish through the mini-cycle with out problems.

Shawnie

adding too many fish is probably the reason..the bacteria wasnt able to handle it ...dozey gave great advice on how to fix it and I hope everything goes well with those great looking babies! using some prime or stress coat+ with the water changes will help them deal with any other ammonia spikes you may have...it detoxes it for 24 hours until another water change if needed

agabr123

yeah, six panda cories at once was definitely too much for the filter to keep up with. if you're planning on adding more fish (aside from waiting until the cycle has finished of course) you should generally add them two at a time every week or two weeks (and i'd suggest quarantining first for 2-3 weeks) since you have the pandas, if you have a QT set up then once your cycle gets back on track you can get a couple more fish and put them in QT for a couple weeks, this should give the bacteria time to catch up

Dozey

In regards to agabr123 post about a QT I couldn’t agree more. Hopefully you have better luck then I’ve had but to date I have yet to purchase fish that didn’t need treatment of some sort. Despite the additional cost and time my QT has saved my stock every time I’ve purchased new fish.

Didgeridoo

Ah, okay. Thank you very much everyone!