The Great Ammonia Mystery

Question
Hello! When I got my 29 gallon fish tank I did a lot of research on cycling and biological filters and all of that fun stuff. I let it cycle for two and a half weeks with the following: a friend who works at a pet store gave me the "bio-sponge" out of a long-running aquarium and I put it in mine, I took some gravel out of a friends aquarium, I used the "stress-zyme" bio activator supposedly containing live cultures, and I put in 10 minnows. So I let it run and fed the minnows minimally and first of all, not a single one of those minnows died. I checked the chemicals regularly and the ammonia and nitrites stayed fairly low (within safe-for-fish parameters) and then one day about a week and a half in the tank got really cloudy for a day or two and then cleared up. I checked the chemicals and everything looked good. I spoke with the man at the aquarium store in my town and he said the cloudiness was most likely a bacteria bloom and that my tank was ready to go as long as the ammonia and nitrites were low, which they were. So I got 5 small cichlids that all seemed healthy at the store. After about a day I noticed that one looked a little sad so I checked the chemicals and the ammonia was ridiculously high! Between 1.5 and 3.0 mg/l!! I was shocked. The nitrites were normal. We did a 1/3 water change and added some ammo-lock. Unfortunately, but as expected, the cichlid died, followed by another one dying the next day but the other three are super happy, eating, etc as are all of the minnows. I have been monitoring the ammonia and nitrites religiously twice a day since and it went down for a day after the water change (not as much as I think it should have) but it seems to be going up again and the nitrites have remained absolutely the same through the whole thing. The fish store man said there is no way that those 5 little cichlids caused an ammonia spike of that magnitude, but I don't know! This is so weird! Do you have any ideas as to what might be going on? It's driving me crazy!

Answer
Hi Alaina, thanks for all the info you provided!
What I think is your tank just hasn't had enough time to establish enough bacterial colonies to deal with the ammonia being produced by all those fish. I know you put all those bacterial supplements and everything but sometimes aquariums still take several weeks to establish the bacteria sufficiently enough to deal with ammonia spikes.

Actually it probably would have been best if you waited until your ammonia and nitrite levels were both ZERO before adding the cichlids. I think your aquarium's biological (bacteria) filter was just too overwhelmed too soon. The cloudiness is also common with new aquariums and usually its a bacterial bloom as a result of a sudden abundance of nutrients. It'll eventually go away and water changes can help tremendously. Once your tank establishes it shouldn't be a re-occurring problem.

So what I would do is give your tank some extra time and keep doing those vital water changes whenever the ammonia gets high or your fish looked stressed. It helps a lot to use an ammonia neutralizer such as Amquel+ along with your water changes or Ammo-lock like you have should work well.
*Keep in mind ammo-lock and other ammonia neutralizers can produce false readings on your ammonia test kit. Ammo-lock is well known for this, test results will often read high for ammonia but the Ammo-lock will have neutralized it.

I think your tank just needs more time and lots of careful monitoring of your fish (which I know you will of course) to be sure they are not suffering. Water changes are your best friend when it comes to water quality problems.

Best of luck, patience is everything!
I really hope this helps,
Karen~