What should I do?

You should keep doing the 25% water changes. You aren't really trying to cycle the QT tank. You just want to make your QT fish happy for the short time they will be in there. You could try grabbing some rock form you display to help with some beneficial bacteria. I think one fish in a QT and daily water changes your ammo test kit may be off if its reading constant levels that high.

 

Going to stick with a two gallon water change as well as using prime to keep the levels down. I am reducing the feeding to only once a day to see if that helps. I am thinking that I am going through a mini cycle since I was originally going to use a sponge filter and changes my mind to switch to a hob. I have both in the tank thinking that the seeded sponge would help seed the biowheel. For the next fish, I am going to only use the hob. Only have two weeks left until I can transfer to my dt!

 

Seems like your tank is cycling, i would let it cycle and not change water till it is done the cycle and your levels are down. And get them fish out of there if you can, as it can burn their gills. Once stabilized, wwc of 1-2 gallons weekly is good

 

as a side note prime does not remove ammonia, it will still show up on your tests.....what prime actually does that helps is it will temporarily bond with the ammonia and make it into a non toxic form until the ammonia can be manually removed however the bond eventually breaks and it can become toxic again, just keep with the WCs and Prime

 

I am confused, most of us stopped cycling with fish 15 years ago because it was harmful to the fish, by changing that much water ie the entire tank in every 4 days is like putting a fish in a brand new tank, a cycle period is normally 2-3 weeks during which time nirtates ammonia... Will spick, until there is a stable bacteria source to reduce the levels.. why are you people recommending they keep changing this amount of water,

 

I recommend you put fishy in your display tank asap

 

because it is a quarantine tank, rather than the permenent home of the fish
a QT is often set up for brief periods and then stripped down again

if one is left running permenently, then totally agree with you, a cycled tank is the way to go

but my experience with QT tanks left in operation between stocking is that they sooner or later (sooner in my case) become just another permenently set up fish tank , complete with corals etc and thus lost as QT tanks

with a QT tank, changing the water or using chemicals to reduce toxins is an often used method of maintaining them

 

Because it's a quarantine tank and not a display tank. Typical cycle can take anywhere from 4-12 weeks to occur. Typical quarantine time is 4-6 weeks. The quarantine could be over before the tank cycles, so changing the water is the right thing to do if the QT tank is not already cycled. Since most people don't use (much less pre-cycle) a QT, the OP is doing the right thing in this instance.

PS- I see Steve posted a similar response while I was typing mine.

 

I agree people do that, but that doesnt make it right, i couldnt agree less with every thing else you stated, high ammonia levels burn gills, an un cycled tank is stressful to fish, .... Imo this is a very poor practice and stressful to the fish.

 

its common practice to QT fish and most people dont have space to keep a QT continuously set up so they use a filter with media from their actual tank and do a lot of WCs and use prime which will take the ammonia and lock it up in a non toxic form temporarily so as long as you are doing regular WCs and using prime it actually isnt that harmful for fish as long as it is done properly