Well it takes the presents of ammonia to get nitrite and it takes that
nitrite to make nitrate., so yu can pretty well assume you have high
levels of ammoina. Amquel doe snot remove ammonia. It is stil there
and will show up as being there is a ammonia test is run, however it
locks up that ammonia and renders it safer for the fish. I wuld do as
Deathco suggests and that is do a water change. I would not worry too
much about alk right now until yu get your water parameters to where
they should be in terms of nitrate, nitrite and ammonia.....onc eyu
get that then concentrate on the alk. Fish can go for a long long
period of time with improper alk or ph, but last only a short time
with levels of nitrate and ammonia being wrong.

Is there any dead or missing fish in that tank? Are yu feeding too
much. Reduce or feed one every couple of days or so for awhile and
see if levels drop. Overfeeding is a major cause of ammonia and
nitrate / nitrite levels being high. Fish can go days without food,
and do just fine and more water has been fouled and fish killed by
feeding proceedures than most other problems......I do not think I
would do a full water change. That can sometimes compound things.
Are you sure your test kits are in date?

When was the last time you cleaned or changed your filter media?

On 14 Jan 2007 10:14:05 -0800, "JB" wrote:

Have been getting spikes in my Nitrite, Nitrate, & Possibly Ammonia...
My test kit shows Nitrate near 40ppm, Nitrite lethally near 10ppm, and
I can't test for ammonia, but it smells strong in my tank...

It's a 10 gallon freshwater tank with (3) 2" adult Sword Tails, and
about 10 baby fry in a net... I just performed a full water change as
advised by PetCo, and cleaned out all the algae in the tank and things
were fine for about 5 days...

Also my Alkalinity (KH) is 40ppm and I know it's supposed to be 120-180
for freshwater fish, but the Pet store has no idea on how to raise
that...

I've used the AmQuel Plus that treats Nitrate, Nitrate & Ammonia for
the past 3 days and still it does not seem to be dropping anything....
Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I am hoping my fish don't
die...



-------
I forgot more about ponds and koi than I'll ever know!