Bio Spira

Mrcote1 · Mar 30, 2019

So I have a 20 gallon QT tank that I put a seeded sponge filter in and after about a week my ammonia started to climb to 0.25. I have a blue star leopard wrasse in there right now which is very concerning since it is healthy and eating frozen. Nitrites and nitrates are zero. I had a black molly in their that died this morning which triggered me to test the water since my ammonia badge was showing there was no ammonia. Bio spira will be here tomorrow. Can I just add a little bit of bio spira at a time? I dont want to dump half the bottle in at once, I was wondering if I could just add like 10ml per water change and that would be good enough just to sustain the bacteria.
Thank you

JasonK84 · Mar 30, 2019

Mrcote1 said:
So I have a 20 gallon QT tank that I put a seeded sponge filter in and after about a week my ammonia started to climb to 0.25. I have a blue star leopard wrasse in there right now which is very concerning since it is healthy and eating frozen. Nitrites and nitrates are zero. I had a black molly in their that died this morning which triggered me to test the water since my ammonia badge was showing there was no ammonia. Bio spira will be here tomorrow. Can I just add a little bit of bio spira at a time? I dont want to dump half the bottle in at once, I was wondering if I could just add like 10ml per water change and that would be good enough just to sustain the bacteria.
Thank you

Are there any meds being used?

If you are treating with copper then your ammonia test won’t read properly. This is one reason for using the badges.

Mrcote1 · Mar 30, 2019

Nope, I was planning on not treating and using the black molly as a canary fish as humblefish has wrote about since I know blue stars are super sensitive. The QT has had copper in it in the past but I use all new filter media and clean the tank before each use. The only reason I can think of the black molly dying is from the ammonia. I put it in fresh water and didnt see any flukes, and there were no ich spots on it. The eyes looked really cloudy though after it was dead