.25ppm ammonia in qt and doing treatment

[bobamike]

hey guys and gals,
I have several fish in qt that I just recieved tuesday.I have had my qt tank up and running now for over a month and have established my biological filtration.I have five small fish in my 10 gal.qt 3 tiny perculas clowns,1- baby hippo tang and 1 1/2 yellow tang. my ammonia has jumped up to .25 ppm but before I tested the water lastnight I started a general cure treatment by api,I have to wait 48 hours and then treat the tank again and then after another 48 hours do a 25% water change,but the ammonia level has me concerned and I am wanting to do a water change now to ease any stress on the fish.but I am affraid that will mess up the treatment .I am thinking about waiting for the first 48 hours to pass by tommorrow and do a water change then ,before adding the second treatment.everyone is doing fine,swimming and eating,the blue tang is staying in the back near the heater and I believe I can see a few small white dots on him,its hard to tell but it looks like there is a small dot on the upper part of his eye,he gets active when I place food in the tank.that being said I plan to start a cupermine treatment by the end of the weekend once I am done with the current treatment and I have the ammonia levels under control.can you guys help me decide on what steps to take from here?
thanks,mike

 

[sleepydoc]

Even though they're small, that's a fair amount of fish for a 10 gal tank, especially added all at once. Even a cycled tank can spike NH4 if too many fish are added to quickly.

You could use a de-toxifier like Amquel or Prime, but those may or may not be compatible with the API treatment you're added. In addition, they are NOT compatible with Cupramine. Your other options are to wait or do a water change. 0.25 is not horrible, so if the fish are doing OK, i would keep a close eye on it and wait a day, then do a water change. If you're worried about diluting the medication, you can simply dose the new water appropriately before doing the change, but a high ammonia level can be more toxic to the fish than most disease that you're prophylactically treating anyway, so I would err on the side of fixing the ammonia.

As a side note with cupramine, the instructions on the bottle are overly aggressive; I would start with 1/3-1/2 the dose they recommend and bring the level up more slowly. Also, make sure you have a copper test kit so you can monitor levels as copper can be toxic to fish. Check out the stickies on ich treatment - hypo and tank transfer are also good options. If you only have a 10 gallon tank, tank transfer would be pretty easy to do, as long as you can handle the logistics.

 

[bobamike]

yeah I was gung ho on the transfer method,but then I thought,what about other parasites? the transfer method wouldnt do anything for the other parasites.but yes I am going to get a copper test kit today or tommorrow,I had my lfs order me one.and I was thinking about slowly adding the copper to the levels that is required.so thanks for confirming that idea too.I will test the water when I get home today and monitor my little guys closely through the night and they will be fed lightly this evening.if all goes well then friday afternoon I will change atleast 5 gallons and add the other packet to the tank.I will wait a day once that treatment is over before starting the copper treatment.

 

[bobamike]

the hippo tang is the only one I am really worried about.the other guys look great and are constantly swimming and playing,the blue tang just staays in the back resting behind the heater,he will come out when I feed them and eat and then he goes right back to his spot.he is a baby,only about an inch long.I have heard the small ones have a high mortality rate,so I hope I can keep him alive and add him to the success list.

 

[MrTuskfish]

Ammonia neutralizers (Prime, Amquel,et al.) become deadly when mixed with Cupramine.

Treating these fish in a 10 gal tank without enough bio-filtration is a disaster waiting to happen. Any tank containing fish should have no ammonia. You can't expect a new fish to deal with a cramped QT, copper, and ammonia at the same time. Get a bigger tank, even a big plastic tote, and do lots of WCs. Here's some good info on Cupramine, the FAQ are vital. http://www.seachem.com/Products/product_pages/Cupramine.html

 

[wooden_reefer]

hey guys and gals,
I have several fish in qt that I just recieved tuesday.I have had my qt tank up and running now for over a month and have established my biological filtration.

How did you establish biological filtration?

Just having some nitrification bacteria is not enough.

About how much ammonia has the filter recently processed?

You should not have ammonia in QT if you had cycled properly in expectation of the bioload in QT. The only exception is when you have to use a drug that harms nitrification bacteria.

If you had used the fishless method to cycle the medium for QT robustly, such a filter should handle any possible reasonable bioload at once in QT.

If you used the fishless method to cycle, immediately after the cycle the population of nitrification bacetria could be extremley high; and many of them will die when there is too little ammonia long after you added livestock; that is, you should have overcompensated when you cycled for your QT.

 

[Mrscribbled]

Copper will give a false ammonia reading, unless using seachem ammonia test kit. Should never house two tangs together in a ten gallon qt.