Gallon Indicators

The ammonia indicator in my aquarium is still showing "warning" even after two partial water changes, why?

It's a 12 gallon aquarium...I changed out four gallons yesterday and three gallons today.

If your tank was starting to cycle itself again, you wouldn't be seeing the ammonia go up, but the nitrites. In a new tank, the nitrites start going up immediately and after about a week or two, the ammonia starts to go up. Chemicals like Cycle can help to speed up this cycle and chemicals that remove chloramines can also help.

With a 12 gallon tank, you should be doing about a 3 gallon water change every other week and changing your filter once a month. Be sure to change the filter on a week that you are not doing a water change.

If I were you, I would start by adding some water conditioner that removes chloramines. Then, check your ammonia indicator. They don't last a long time, so it could be that your indicator isn't working correctly. While it's nice to have the indicator in the tank to keep you informed regularly, it would be a good idea to also have some test strips or drops so that you can check weekly to be sure that your indicator is still giving you the correct reading.

If you have fish in the tank and the ammonia is that high, you will soon be seeing red streaks on your fish from ammonia poisoning.

Emptying your tank and scrubbing everything is a good way to kill all the beneficial bacteria in your tank (which you don't want to do!!!) and completely stress out your fish.

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