ammonia

[jesman002]

I have a 20 gal h with 10 lbs ls and 20 lbs lr its been going for about 5 weeks i did alot of test and it seemed the cycle was over so i added a couple snails and a couple small hermits after about another week i added a clown did a couple test and everything was fine for about another week so i added more snails and did my first water change using distilled water that was about 5 days ago and now my ammonia has seemed to go up quit a bit nitrite is still 0 and nitrate is low what could be the problem and should i do another water change?also i have been getting alot of green algae

[phenom5]

i'd wait a day, see how things go. how high is your ammonia?

[Reefmaniac]

Might be overfeeding your crabs...

[jesman002]

iv been feeding them once every two days

ammonia is at 1.0 ppm

[phenom5]

ammonia is at 1.0 ppm

 

i'd do a WC if its that high....

[Quash]

yeah bro, try to keep that ammonia close to nil

[jesman002]

how much water should i change? also the water has started getting cloudy

[nano-nemo]

what size tank, with ammonia that high id recommend a 50% change one day, wait 24 hours then do it again to drop the levels, dont forget to remove the decaying material

[jesman002]

i might have had a bad test cause i tested twice last night and it read high ammonia tested again tonight and it read near zero same test kit not sure what happend though my water is still a bit cloudy what could be causing this? would carbon clear the water?

[SeaSide]

Ammonia spike can go down dramatically in a night. Its like... you got 6ppm at the morning, and 1 ppm at next morning.

So what happened to you could be a natural procedure during the cycling.

However, check your ammonia level frequentl to see if your ammonia level fluctuate. When almost all ammonia is gone, your water will become clear. Carbon has nothing to do with ammonia and cycling. It only take care of bad smell and other undesirable chemical possibly in your water.