Having some water problems

[cavalier9976]

Since moving our Tiger Oscar over 4 weeks ago to a new tank, we are consistently not having ideal water conditions. i am wandering if there is another problem we are not seeing, or we are just seeing another tank cycle. The fish itself is showing now signs of stress at all, he is actually very much himself active and eating.

Tank Setup
75G
AQ110 - new for the tank
AQ70 x2 - Bought from old tank with original media

Water tests using API freshwater kit;

April 10
PH = 6.0
Amm = 1.0
Nitrite = 0
Nitrate = 0

50% water change after testing

April 12
PH = 6.0
Amm = 1.0
Nitrite = 0
Nitrate = 0

50% water change after testing

April 16
PH = 6.8
Amm = 2.0
Nitrite = 0
Nitrate = 0

60-70% water change

April 19
PH = 6.8
Amm = 1.0
Nitrite = 0
Nitrate = 0

30% water change

April 22
PH = 6.0
Amm = 0.5
Nitrite = 0
Nitrate = 0

60% water change

April 24
PH = 6.6
Amm = 0.25
Nitrite = 0
Nitrate = 0 to 5.0

25% water change

April 26 (today)
PH = 6.6
Amm = 0.5
Nitrite = 0
Nitrate = 0 to 5.0

no change today so far...need to get more prime.

Water changes are done with gravel vac attached to the bathroom tap (in a small apartment) out and in. Whilst filling back up, we are replacing Prime/Salt as required as per the instructions on the back of label.
Last week, in one of the AQ70's I placed a Ammonia pad as a filter part. Moving the one that was in there and stuffing it the AQ110.

Are we on the right track? any more hints?? I tested the water from our tap and the ammonia is 0.25...is this not helping?? or slowing the process.

Cheers

[Gerry]

your having a mini cycle while your waiting for the new filter to seed, the old one is not enough for the larger volume.

Oscar will sulk t the change and the ammonia won't be helping. just keep up extra water changes until your getting constant zero reading for ammonia and nitrite

[donsfish]

Agree that the tank is going through a cycle. Almost sounds like something went awry with the change over and the existing media.
What's a little strange is the 0 nitrite reading along with the progression of other numbers, suspect 0 isn't actually correct or the nitrite/nitrates are transposed??
Bottom line is like Gerry said, keep up the extra water changes for a bit.

[OinKY]

Test the tap water for ammonia...I'm betting it's there.
The smaller your water change the lower the ammonia,so the filters seem to be doing their job. Look closely at the pattern in your testing,it bares it out.
As long as the filters are pulling the ammonia down between water changes the O will be perfectly fine

If you are rural,or live in a town/city that gets it's water from a river or rural reservoir,then it's the time of year for run-off to start bumping ammonia and nitrites (more often just ammonia) levels up.
If you are using Prime,and trying to dose up to eliminate the ammonia,then you may possibly be getting a false reading from ammonium as the Prime breaks down chloramines and binds any other free ammonia from the tap. That would be dependent on the regent type in your test kit.