nitrate/ammonia problem

[groovy]

Hi folks...at present i,m working 4 days out of town so that puts me home for 3 days...One of my tanks a 23 gal. 36" long with 3 juve.cons about 60 or 70 days old, tank is heavily filtered with 3 aquaclears a small marineland bio wheel and in tank sponge filter just completed an 80% water change( which i do on a regular basis once a week) 24 hrs ago . Just checked water perams. and get 0.25 ppm of ammonia and about 40ppm of nitrate this after only 24hrs...so it has me a bit worried No way the bio load in this tank should constitute such readings Is it in my filtration? Could this be caused by overfeeding?

[Whiplash4ever]

Have you checked your water out of the tap yet?


Whip

_________________
[Bandit has just used a broken bridge to jump a river]
Carrie: That was great! I want to jump something else! I want to jump a car, or a house, anything!
Bandit: [still shaking] Then jump me!
- Smokey and the Bandit (1977)

[Tom]

Are you using an undergravel filter?

[groovy]

just checked tap water it checks out fine and not using ugf ..............wondering if plants could cause this spike

[Tom]

If they died and were decomposing is the only way I could imagine...
Last time I had an unanswered puzzle like that, I found a little gold nugget plec I had, squashed between some rocks.
Took a couple weeks to find because the fish disappeared (ie hid in a crack somewhere) regularly anyway.