Do my water params look okay?

[MrDobing]

Hi all,

First timer here so sorry that this gets posted so much, just added 10 (blue) neos to my freshwater 10g tank.
Been cycling for almost 6 weeks and water tests have been looking fine for a week and a half now. Had a nerite snail in since week 4 and it's been happy.

Just drip acc'd my shrimp for 2 hours and added to tank. Just did a last test to see how water was looking.

Is it me or does my ammonia look to be about 0.25ppm? Worried it is too high all of a sudden and my RCS will struggle?
Do I need to stress about this? (All i've done for the last 6 weeks..!)

Thanks!

 

[flopperfrog]

Hi all,

First timer here so sorry that this gets posted so much, just added 10 (blue) neos to my freshwater 10g tank.
Been cycling for almost 6 weeks and water tests have been looking fine for a week and a half now. Had a nerite snail in since week 4 and it's been happy.

Just drip acc'd my shrimp for 2 hours and added to tank. Just did a last test to see how water was looking.

Is it me or does my ammonia look to be about 0.25ppm? Worried it is too high all of a sudden and my RCS will struggle?
Do I need to stress about this? (All i've done for the last 6 weeks..!)

Thanks!

yes, it does seem to be 0.25ppm. what is confusing is there seems to be little to no nitrate. did you add an ammonia source while cycling?

 

[Freshfishguy]

Hi all,

First timer here so sorry that this gets posted so much, just added 10 (blue) neos to my freshwater 10g tank.
Been cycling for almost 6 weeks and water tests have been looking fine for a week and a half now. Had a nerite snail in since week 4 and it's been happy.

Just drip acc'd my shrimp for 2 hours and added to tank. Just did a last test to see how water was looking.

Is it me or does my ammonia look to be about 0.25ppm? Worried it is too high all of a sudden and my RCS will struggle?
Do I need to stress about this? (All i've done for the last 6 weeks..!)

Thanks!

That does look to me like 0.25ppm Ammonia. It’s possible that the ammonia spiked a bit with the addition of the shrimp. I would just overdose prime, bacteria should process the ammonia pretty quickly.

 

[flopperfrog]

Hi all,

First timer here so sorry that this gets posted so much, just added 10 (blue) neos to my freshwater 10g tank.
Been cycling for almost 6 weeks and water tests have been looking fine for a week and a half now. Had a nerite snail in since week 4 and it's been happy.

Just drip acc'd my shrimp for 2 hours and added to tank. Just did a last test to see how water was looking.

Is it me or does my ammonia look to be about 0.25ppm? Worried it is too high all of a sudden and my RCS will struggle?
Do I need to stress about this? (All i've done for the last 6 weeks..!)

Thanks!

ammonia is toxic to both shrimp and fish, so you wanna get that down as soon as possible

 

[MrDobing]

ammonia is toxic to both shrimp and fish, so you wanna get that down as soon as possible

I have definitely seen a higher nitrate reading than above, this is what is confusing me suddenly. I have API tap water conditioner, shall i overdose that instead?

yes, it does seem to be 0.25ppm. what is confusing is there seems to be little to no nitrate. did you add an ammonia source while cycling?

And no ammonia, I was told by several experienced people on the UK shrimp keepers FB page that my tropica soil will leach enough ammonia.

 

[flopperfrog]

I have definitely seen a higher nitrate reading than above, this is what is confusing me suddenly. I have API tap water conditioner, shall i overdose that instead?

And no ammonia, I was told by several experienced people on the UK shrimp keepers FB page that my tropica soil will leach enough ammonia.

no, dont overdose on the water conditioner. i think that maybe your soil didnt leach enough ammonia to build the bacteria that would deal with the bioload of the shrimp? usually when cycling you get the ammonia up and the bacteria builds from that. unless youre doing very frequent water changes, nitrates are usually 10-30ish
i would buy something that has some bacteria to deal with the ammonia

 

[Freshfishguy]

I have definitely seen a higher nitrate reading than above, this is what is confusing me suddenly. I have API tap water conditioner, shall i overdose that instead?

And no ammonia, I was told by several experienced people on the UK shrimp keepers FB page that my tropica soil will leach enough ammonia.

Ahh darn. API Conditioner doesn’t detoxify ammonia and nitrite, which is why I only use Prime to condition my water, just in case I ever need to detoxify ammonia and/or nitrite. I would definitely recommend switching to Prime. The issue with only relying on the substrate as an ammonia source is that it may not be proportional to the amount of ammonia that your critters will produce, and thus you may have a mini cycle when adding shrimp/fish like this. Did the ammonia rise to 2ppm during the cycle and stay at 2ppm until it was fully processed into nitrite?
For now, since you don’t have Prime, you’ll have to do water changes to bring the ammonia down. I would recommend daily 50% water changes until the ammonia does not rise for 24 hours. Or, if you can go pick up Prime, go get that and just follow the instructions on the bottle for overdosing according to the amount of ammonia you have until the ammonia is gone. I would also recommend getting a bacteria starter like Tetra Safe Start like flopperfrog suggested.

 

[richiep]

I've read lots of reports on this where people have monitored an ammonia leech, tropica themselves say to do two weekly water changes during the first 4 weeks although they don't admit to ammonia leech, if its affecting your shrimp it will show by them not moving and maybe huddled together,
Looking at the test id say its lower than 0.25 and small water changes every two days may hold it at bay unless you have another tank you can move them to