Ammonia problem in my planted 10gal

kzr750r1 is right, your tank is overstocked. As he stated get a better biofilter, or put in a second biofilter to help relieve the bioload. You may have to increase frequency of water changes to twice a week. Be sure that your ammonia test kit is giving you accurate readings. You may want to get a sample of tank water tested by a local fish store that tests aquarium water for free just to be sure.

Also, some other things that I would suggest to help with your problem. Pack the tank with more fast growing stem plants to help absorb some of the organic waste, limit or greatly reduce how much you feed your fish to further reduce waste production, purchase and place Seachem purigen in your biofilter to help absorb the organic waste, and consider the following. Go to Wal-Mart and look for a product called Septo-Bac in the septic tank supplies. I believe there are 8 envelopes in a box. Now, buy some unbleached coffee filters. Take 1 tablespoon septo-bac powder and thoroughly mix in 1 cup water. Now strain the water through the coffee filter to catch the solid stuff. Discard the coffee filter with the solid stuff and take the filtered liquid and pour directly into your filter or tank. The Septo-Bac uses the same beneficial bacteria as BioSpira for a fraction of the cost and will quickly increase the beneficial bacteria in your filter to neutralize the excess ammonia. I have used it several times over the years to quickly and permanently neutalize and eliminate dangerous ammonia and nitrite spikes and have never suffered a fish loss using Septo-Bac. And one more thing, you may want to use a piece of cucumber to bait the snails and reduce/limit their population as difficult as it may be. I hate to tell you, but as the snails continue to multiply at a rapid pace, they will add to your problem to a point where you will find it impossible to resolve your problem no matter what you do. Then, your fish may begin suffering and many could die of ammonia toxicity.

I too have a overstocked 10 gallon(as per my signature)tank, but this happened because I was forced to relocate the fish to the 10 gallon when my 20 gallon sprung a leak. I have been able to keep ammonia and nitrites at zero eventhough my tank is overstocked by doing what I suggested you do.

Regards and Good Luck.

I thought of that yesterday while doing my water change. I testing my tap water with the AmQuel in it. It did show some Ammonia about 0.50 - 1.0 ppm before putting it into my tank. I've used 2 different ammonia test strips and they both read well over 3.0ppm for my tank.

EDIT:

I found an article online confirming AmQuel+ can give false high readings, it says you need a Salicylate-based test kit to get the true reading. I found one online at Big-Al's online so I'm going to stop by the store after work (I'm a few mins from the FL store) and pick it up, they are only a few bucks. I'm still going to work on reducing the load in my tank since I agree that it is over stocked. I'll let ya know what I find out. Here is the article in case anyone is interested: http://www.bestfish.com/tips/091798.html

Thanks!

So I went and bought a SeaChem Ammonia test today to test for NH3 and NH4.

Results:
NH3 (free toxic ammonia): 0 ppm
NH4 (ionized ammonia): 6 ppm

This explains why my fish aren't dead and don't seem to be in any kind of distress.

The guy at BigAl's suggested I do water changes with filtered or distilled water and supplement nutrients for plants until the NH4 is gone. I have SeaChem Florish Tabs, will those work?

So the moral of my story is don't buy cheap test kits :icon_mrgr