Hello everyone, I'm at my wits end. I have a marineland 60 gallon (24x14x13) tank with a marineland c-260 canister filter. I've had it running for almost two months. Water tests out at Ph 8.2, Nitrate 0, Nitrite 0, Ammonia .25 with a spike to .4. As far as fish I've got 8 Danios, 1 pleco, 1 johanni, 2 red tiger cichlids, 1 yellow lab, 1 Demasoni Cichlid. All of which are juveniles. I'm not over feeding. I've used the quick start, the ammonis lock, etc. and nothing is working. How can I get my ammonia down?

Are you doing water changes? If I test and there's an ammonia count I do a water change e.g. 20%. Then test again the next day and do another water change if I'm still seeing ammonia.

What are you doing for bio filters? Anything in particular in your canister? Do you have some type of substrate and how thick is it if you do? Do you use Prime or Start Right with your water changes?

Before we started focusing on bio filtration ammonia chips worked well to remove ammonia from our tank but they had to be replace ever two weeks or so.

For our tanks, we stopped having ammonia problems when we focused on cultivating our bio filters. There are multiple types of good bacteria need to convert ammonia and break down NO3 and NO2. Most our bio filters are media bags with lava rock and synthetic sponges. Use only de-chlorinated water to clean your bio filters or you'll kill off the bacteria when you're rinsing the waste build up out of your media.

Using Start Right or Prime with all your water changes helps with maintaining or starting your bacteria colonies.

We also got rid of most of the substrate in our tanks. Only the main Cichlid tank has some sand in the bottom for them to push around. The other tanks just have a lite scattering of decorative pebbles.

Low maintenance plants like Java fern and pothos help consume the N03. Plants can backfire though if they decay to much and you don't fish out the dead bits they'll increase your ammonia an NOs problems.