high ammonia

Question
Hi,
I have a 32 gallon freshwater tank that I am having problems keeping my ammonia down.  It is a well planted tank and is not overcrowded.  I have 4 platys, 4 zebra danios, 3 mollies,and 3 swordtails.  I do weekly water changes and I am careful about not overfeeding them.  The first time I had a problem I was feeding the fish 2 times a day but I have now cut back to once a day.  I just did a water change and then tested my water which showed a high ammonia level.  I didn't test prior to changing the water.  Could I have caused the levels to go up by disturbing the gravel?  I put in an ammonia remover and the level returned to 0.  The fish all seemed fine.......swimming around and fed well this morning.  What am I doing wrong?  would the levels have gone back to normal by themselves and just disturbing the gravel caused a temporary rise?  Should I clean the tank more often?  I add bacteria each time I do a water change and a water conditioner.  What else can I do?
Thank you in advance
Kerry

Answer
Good evening Kerry, thank you for your question, and for providing as much information about your setup as you did!

First off, I am not a fan of adding bacterial starters regularly to aquariums. I don't know if this is causing your problem; nevertheless, I would discontinue this practice. Unless you are keeping highly specialized fish, there is no reason to add much of anything except dechlorinator to the water. I use the small bottles of Prime, because the dropper bottle makes dosing simple - just 3 drops per gallon. You may consider adding some "Livebearer Salt" to your tank since you have mostly livebearers. This is supposed to be gentler on plants than straight sodium chloride - I would dose just half of what it tells you to, just to be safe.

Here's a link to a FAQ about the product:
http://www.seachem.com/support/FAQs/LiveBearerSalt_faq.html

When the ammonia remover expends its useful life, I would not replace it. The reason being that these products interfere with the nitrogen cycle. They are fine for a temporary emergency, but in the long run, you don't want an ammonia inhibiting product in your tank - you want beneficial bacteria, oodles of them, as a natural ammonia inhibitor! That's what biological filtration is all about.

What I suggest is that you upgrade your biological filtration. Are you using one filter with a disposable cartridge? I used to, but now I use two AquaClear filters and am pleased with the results. Even if you don't have an AC filter, their filtration comes in different sizes and you can surely find a size that will fit in your filter.

In my aquarium, one filter has a 10 oz. bag of Chemi-Pure, which I change every 3 months and rinse 1-2 times a month in dechlorinated water. The other filter is full of biological media - a Cell-Pore block on the bottom, a foam block in the middle and Biomax (ceramic rings in a porous bag) on top. I suggest you stack your filter in a similar way. If possible, dedicate an entire filter to biological media, biological is really the most important of your three filter functions. The others are mechanical (removing particles) and chemical.

You don't need an expensive extra filter. In fact, the cheapest filter of adequate size would be just fine - I recommend Walmart's line of filters, Regent. They are manufactured by Marineland, so they are a generic Penguin.

As far as disturbing the gravel goes, do you mean you A) disturbed it by vacuuming the gravel, or B) just by pouring in new water? The solution for A) is to only vacuum half of the gravel at a time, then next time vacuum the other half. A heavily planted tank may not even need gravel vacuuming, it depends on a few other factors. The solution to B) is to aim the water at a rock or, in the abscence of this, a mug that you put in the water temporarily for this purpose.

I would clean the tank on an as needed basis. Scrape the glass when necessary (some folks like those algae magnets) and rinse the filter media ideally once a week, but at least twice a month. Never rinse the media in tap water! The chlorine/sanitizer will decimate the bacteria populations.

Be careful when buying live plants, as they can carry algae such as beard algae (I just recently triumphed over an outbreak) and those dreaded snail eggs. A prophylactic bleach dip will help with this. To learn more, type -- "bleach dip" plants --  into Google's search engine.

I hope that helps! It sounds like you are taking fine care of your fish and plants, I suspect your beneficial bacteria just need a few more spots on which to colonize. Good luck!

Nicole