Hi Everyone,

I'm new at the world of fish (some of you know if you read my post on the disease and diagnosis board). So here's my dilemma, I'm having trouble controlling ammonia. I have a 10 gallon tank that has been up and running for a little over a month. In the past 5 days I have done 4 water changes: 20%, 20%, 50%, 30%. I have been monitoring the ammonia carefully since yesterday. It started the day at 4ppm, after the 50% change it went down to 1.5-2ppm. This morning it was at a strong 2ppm, so I did a 30% change and now its right about at 1ppm.

My question is, how often can you change the water and is that all I can be doing to reduce ammonia (other than decreasing food, which i have also done)? I don't want to stress my fish out with too frequent of changes.

Oh yeah, and my other levels are:
pH=7.5
GH=179
Nitrite=0ppm

My fish are a goldfish, a small catfish, and a small algae eater (a loach?). I've been told my tank is overcrowded, but I can't get a larger tank quite yet for space reasons. I am more than willing to do water changes to combat that.

Thanks!!
Amy

You can get ammonia removing media to put in your filters, and water conditioners that remove ammonia as well. You can change water often, once a day small changes is okay, but don't wash out your filter, as you need it to build up the good bacteria to break down ammonia.

In the beginning of a new tank setup, I always use massive amounts of ammonia absorbing media in my filters, seems to help, at least for a while.