# Ammonia bacteria outburst



## hristoz (Oct 2, 2008)

Hi,

was not sure where to put this one, so i decided to enter it on the algae sub-forum:

my aquarium (230 l) used to run on an internal filter. I decided to add an external canister, which should have become the main filter with time. The canister i ordered came with a bottle of bio-active liquid which i needed to add to the siporax layer in the filter. Which i did. Only i did it before i read the instructions which said: 5ml per week to every 200 L of water. I added the whole 50 ml - that is a 10 times overdose. 
The situation started getting ugly. The filter outtake started pouring whitish stuff which started spreading on everything. The third day was awful - nearly one fifth of the water column was full clouds of this stuff - happy ammonia bacteria.

Meanwhile my old internal filter broke down so i needed to get it out earlier.

I started daily 20l water changes trying to remove the stuff. I did that twice already. The outtake kind of stopped to produce it but still there is a lot of it left and i think it is there to stay.

So, any ideas what to do or what might happen ?

Thanks in advance


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## csaxe21 (Nov 25, 2008)

First off, is there any fish in there?
If there isn't, then I'd I'd at least boost up your water changes to 30-50% a day. You may have to cycle a bit longer, if that was what you were in the middle of doing, but you can't have that much ammonia in your tank.

Do you have a test kit? What's the Ammonia reading?


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## hristoz (Oct 2, 2008)

Yes, there is fish.

The tank has actually been cycled already and in pretty good condition. It was a bad chain of events that lead to the current one: i decided to add an external canister but overdosed the bio activators and on top of that, my main internal filter broke. I think i need to be careful with the water changes now. Also, i don't have any tests and my current conditions do not allow a major clean up.

It is a pretty tied-up situation.


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