Bottom posted.
Don wrote:
I recently moved 18 African Cichlids and two small pleco's from an
established 20 gallon to a used 35 gallon tank I bought. The tank is
nowhere near as over-populated as it might seem as the African's range
from 3/4" to 11/2" long. Now I screwed up my bio-filter by not
realizing the danger of rinsing everything in (chlorinated) tap water
-- including the bio-wheels on the Emperor 400 that came with the used
35 gallon setup! The gravel from both tanks was pretty nasty as was
the Emperor 400 -- that's my only excuse for the over-zealous washing.
Once I realized what I had done I added some gravel from the used
setup I had acquired -- still in a pail with the tank water from the
(very highly) used setup. So I had at least some undisturbed seeding.
I bought to pouches of Bio-Spira from two different LFS's -- trusting
that at least one would have escaped poor shipping/handling practice
-- and slowly poured the contents over the bio-wheels. My fish are
showing NO signs of stress and have voracious appetite. The nitrites
promply went down from .25-.5 to 0 but the ammonia persists at about
.25. Ph is about 8.4, hardness about 10. I am using two different
test kits with identical results. Both are the type where yellow=0,
dark green=death. One has two test chemicals and the other uses
three.
I am puzzled why the ammonia remains after the nitrites are gone.
Isn't this backwards?
I have not used "ammo-lock" but the new water conditioner has
something similar in it.

Don in Austin

It does sound backward to me. I had a nitrite spike most likely caused by a
biowheel pro 60 that got plugged up with pond snails but I have it fixed now
(lowered water level so snails wouldn't climb into or on it) but my ammonia
stayed at zero. To top off the mystery I still have "trace" amounts of
nitrite, that danged stuff just doesn't seem to go away yet (I still need to
give it more time I admit). Don't get confused with ammo-lock type
products - they can starve the biological filter and possibly cause the tank
to cycle all over again. I recommend monitoring the tank's water quality and
changing water often or at the very least when the test kits indicate. You
will get through this barring unforeseen events. Good luck and later!