Ammonia and Other Poisons
Ammonia and Other Poisoning
Ammonia poisoning technically refers to a poison in the water from fish waste or other decomposing organic matter in your tank. It is very harmful to guppies, compromising their immune system and opening the door to a variety of diseases. Whatever disease happens to be present in your tank it soon gets an upper hand. You may think the cause was the disease infection, when the original root cause was poor water parameters.
Guppies live in streams in the wild. The water is purified by the stream in its natural process of moving through plants and over nitrifying bacteria living on objects in its bed. Making frequent water changes and filtration accomplishes this purification in our tanks. Unlike fish adapted to stagnant water with low oxygen levels (like air breathing Bettas and Paradise fish), guppies do best in water that is changed regularly.
In a properly cycled tank the ammonia level should be at zero, as the nitrifying bacteria in the filter should convert it to nitrite and then to nitrate. If you overfeed the fish, overwhelming the bacterial colony in the filters, ammonia levels will quickly rise, stressing the guppies. The filter may become clogged, reducing the effectiveness of the bacterial colony. Or you sometimes feed the fish too much dry food and too much live brine shrimp. The shrimp get sucked into the filter where they decompose, releasing ammonia.
The symptoms of a biological cycle that has gone wrong is a single fish, or several fish inactive at the back of the tank or hovering at the back of the tank near the surface. A female weak from recently giving birth will be found dead. Or you will have other seemingly random deaths. If left unchecked, soon all the tank inhabitants are hovering at the top of the tank and near the back. They lose their appetite.
If you measure the ammonia level in your tank with a test kit and the ammonia level is near zero, the poison may be another chemical. It could be nitrite or nitrate, the end product of the biological cycle, which is toxic at high levels. A friend once had problems with the hot water heater in his house. It leeched high levels of lead into the water. Another friend put in new copper piping and promptly began losing fish.
There are a number of other things that can go wrong with filters. A good sign that the problem is a compromised filter is when only one tank of many seems to be affected. If you feed your guppies a bit too aggressively, the tank will "go down" on a fairly regular basis. Usually it is a tank of the weakest fish, those that have been inbred too much. It is a sign of over feeding the guppies too much for the amount of water change they have been given. The rule is to change water more often and more extensively if you are feeding heavily. You can feed three times a day large portions and do water changes twice a week at the rate of 75% new water to keep the tank healthy.
The rule is to gradually make changes to the water. Don't go from 25% water changes to 75% water changes. Work up to the 75% level. And make sure the new water has exactly the same parameters (pH, GH) as the water it is replacing and roughly the same temperature.
So what happens if you see a stressed fish? As soon as you see one fish that is timid, at the back of the tank and either at the surface or in the bottom corner, keep an eye on it. It may be just resting. However if it continues to be timid and lethargic, immediately give the tank a 75% water change and reduce the amount of feeding in that tank. Usually that perks the tank up right away, and you do not have to do anything further.
If the situation gets worse or you discover a tank with most of its inhabitants stressed, do a 75% water changes two days in a row and do not feed the fish!
On the first day clean the filters in the water you have drained from the tank. Do not clean the filters in tap water, as the goal is to remove organic sludge from the filter to unclog it, not to destroy its beneficial bacterial colony. Also add chemicals that neutralize all the different possible chemicals in the tank. Add some Prime to neutralize ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. The other product to use is EasyBalance by Tetra, which claims also to treat phosphates, as well as nitrates. The second day do another 75% water change and add some Prime according to the manufacturer's recommendation. Because you have cleaned the filter, continue to add Prime to the tank for the next four or five days until the filter is back up and running at peak efficiency. Begin feeding the fish the third day lightly and only if they show they are really hungry.
If you have a really bad case in a tank of highly inbred guppies, a strain that you acquired previously. And the guppies start dying with no obvious sign of disease. Use a secret weapon: potassium permanganate. This is a caustic alkali that is dangerous to use at the wrong dosage. See the Potassium Permanganate guide to its use in the Disease Treatments section.
The PP will stop the problem in its tracks and the tank recover. Its primary value is that it quickly reduces the biological load in the tank and kills small parasites. At least that is how it is used on fish farms in Southeast Asia. Clean the filters and the sides of the tank before adding PP. Then also add it after a 75% water change.
When you move your guppies to a fresh tank and if they show the symptoms listed above. Follow the corrective measures outlined above; you should be able to get a tank back on its feet and functioning well. If your fish showed signs of infectious diseases like columnaris or flukes, I strongly recommend bleaching the tank.