well, I know this is slightly off topic, but I can't find any freshwater
aquarium newsgroups so I'll have to post here and hope you guys will help me
even tho it is not about plants.

My aquarium is about a month old and had the first fish put in about a week
into it. it is a 29 gallon, has a penguin 170 filter, a aquaclear
powerhead, and a 100 watt submersible heater. I am mainting the temperature
at about 80 degrees. I have been treating with stress zyme and using a
combination of stress coat and prime as my stress-coat treatments (only the
combination because prime has been selling out in stores recently and i
wasnt able to pick it up until about 2 or 3 weeks after the tank had been
set up).

the problem I have been running into is that my ammonias have been
maintaining a level as high as 2.0 while my nitrites are dead on zero. I
have attempted daily 20% water changes to remove the ammonia as well as
higher doses of Prime which removes about .6 ppm for the normal dosage. to
detoxify the ammonia I have been occasionaly adding ammo-lock, however I do
not know how often to add it so I will admit I have been sporadic about it.

It seems counter-intuitive for me to have high ammonia and no nitrites since
the normal cycle for a tank is to get high ammonia, and no nitrites only in
the first 3 days of the tank cycle. My ammonia test kit is less than 6
months old and I do not know if it uses Salicyte testing methods.

Any help that you guys could provide would be very appreciated. thanks.