What level of ammonia is too high?

I changed the water two days ago, and the ammonia is getting higher again. The fishtank has had bacterial blooms from a large Increase in stocking my already cycled tank. (See last post)

I am trying to keep ammonia and nitrates low while also allowing the beneficial bacteria to accumulate and adapt.

Is the ammonia high enough that I should water? If so, how much? I usually do 30% weekly, but have had to up this to every three days because of ammonia spikes. How should I go about keeping ammonia down and letting the good bacteria build up?

 

In terms of keeping ammonia down, just keep up with your water changes using prime if you have it - I'd also up them to 50% as well. Eventually your nitrifying bacteria will catch up with the bioload, it will just take a little patience and time.

 

The members here would probably need more info.
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It's hard to determine without knowing your pH and temperature. If you have high pH then none. Low pH then you'll have to use an online calculator as most test kits only test for total ammonia/ammonium which ammonium being not harmful.

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The salinity of freshwater tanks are typically .5. The rest is up to you. Normally you do not want any Ammonia as it's like breathing in cleaner fluid. but typically when you get down to it about .04 ppm is starts to irritate fish.
Now your bacteria will multiply to account for the excess food/Ammonia. Another thing to look out for is with your ammonia spike you will also inevitably have nitrites go up as well so test for that as well. And then you will have nitrates go up faster as well depending on your tank.

It seems you're at a low level but like I said it depends on a lot of factors that you haven't posted.

 

For me anything above 0 is too high. As above it depends on PH and temp to determine how toxic ammonia is to fish.

In your circumstances I would be doing 50% water changes daily and testing regularly too until your out of the woods.

 

My tank never tests Yellow for ammonia. It's always at the .25 level. Yours looks ok. Anything more then that you're in trouble, tho.

 

I always see .25 ammonia when I test as well. Cannot get it lower. I believe this is common with the test kit.

 

The answer to your question is that you should keep the ammonia as low as possible to protect your fish. No more than .25 is good. The bacteria will take care of itself and in time it will grow to match the higher ammonia levels.

The frequency of your water changes should be determind by the test results.