0.90 Phosphate/ 20 ammonia Please help

[mariano]

Good evening, so i usually do a water test every saturday around 9/10pm.
this are my test results from today.
Salinity 1.024
Calcium 420
Alkalinity 7.6
Mag 1720
Phosphate 0.90 —Hanna
Temp 80.3
pH 7.9
Nitrate 20
Ammonia 0.2

RedSea 170

My tank has been set up for a few months now. About 2 days ago i finished removing my sandbed (maybe 1inch) and went barebottom. the fish seem fine and the corals also look fine, i just doses 5ml of Seachem AmGuard just in case, and im going a 25 percent water change tomorrow.
Here is my question, does anyone knows whats going on? im still new to all this test and is getting me so confused. How are phosphate and nitrate so high. if anyone can help, i will really appreciate it

i attached a pic of the tank when it had sand and another pic i just took ( maybe 5 mins ago)

 

[mariano]

* i meant 20 nitrates on the tittle ( not 20 ammonia) cant find a way to fix it.

 

[NinjaTiLL]

About 2 days ago i finished removing my sandbed (maybe 1inch) and went barebottom.

How fast did you remove the sand? All at once? You likely received a huge portion of your biological filter and the tank hasn't had enough time to rebuild the beneficial bacteria. Edit. Now you say nitrates not Ammonia. But .2 is still high enough to get concerned in an established system.

Not sure about Nitrate.

 

[mariano]

How fast did you remove the sand? All at once? You likely received a huge portion of your biological filter and the tank hasn't had enough time to rebuild the beneficial bacteria.

i did half one week and the other half the following week .

 

[NinjaTiLL]

i did half one week and the other half the following week .

Ok... Probably a different issue

 

[Larry L]

Those numbers are a bit high but nothing to panic about, especially if your corals look good. You said the tank has been set up for a few months, what were nitrates and phosphates looking like before? I agree with @NinjaTiLL that you've probably just disrupted your biological filter and things might take a while to settle back in.

 

[mariano]

Those numbers are a bit high but nothing to panic about, especially if your corals look good. You said the tank has been set up for a few months, what were nitrates and phosphates looking like before? I agree with @NinjaTiLL that you've probably just disrupted your biological filter and things might take a while to settle back in.

this is the last water test i did before the one i did today.

 

[Dan_P]

How are you measuring ammonia?
What was the nitrate and phosphate levels before removing the sand?

 

[mariano]

How are you measuring ammonia?
What was the nitrate and phosphate levels before removing the sand?

i’m measuring ammonia with the red sea test kit. before removing sand phosphate was 0.03 and nítrate 0.

 

[brandon429]

We can eliminate at least free ammonia as a concern. Nitrate and phosphate, concern away

The .2 stated above does not match pictures, the living biology in the tank, so the test is wrong.

Reasons nh3 isn't a concern: if it was above safe levels the water would be cloudy due to animals dying, no corals opened, any fish would be dead. Red sea ammonia shows false positives for free ammonia commonly, frequently in posts. There are also zero read posts, it's a mix of 50/50 stuck ammonia/ ammonia ok when dealing with titration ammonia kits

Your tank pictures show ammonia in full control. Additional nh3 proofing: we've done this same sand removal job for 36 pages in the sand rinse thread, removed all at once not nicely in sections, and had some digital ammonia testing using both midstream and working- seneye tests and ammonia control doesn't change from the pre- removal levels.

Reef tanks aren't able to endure free ammonia at .2 constant/ often reported levels.

Removing sand doesn't change the remaining surface area, the live rock.

Live rock is already full of bacteria, we can't make a remaining filter more efficient by adding more bacteria, the attachment points are already used up before removed sand. What's left as rock is either enough for handling tank waste or it's not; giving time for the system to take on bacteria wouldn't work because stacking bacteria on top of bacteria already in place doesn't increase a filters efficiency, it decreases it by decreasing surface area presentation.

If replacing sand beds required more surface area we'd have to add more rock, attachment points. That your current setup stayed alive past 48 hours means it's enough remaining surface area after the removal

I can't figure out why some kits show danger- level nh3 and some don't. Applies here, you had a prior zero stated. It doesn't factor into my take on nh3 here since this mix of .25 or .2 among healthy tanks is so common. What we never see: actual ammonia toxicity in the reef/ tank loss

I can't name one time it's occurred on digital testing confirmed. The resounding clue in online free ammonia posts is the tank always looks fine though claimed to be poisoned by nh3 at irritation levels.

 

[Dan_P]

We can eliminate at least free ammonia as a concern. Nitrate and phosphate, concern away

The .2 stated above does not match pictures, the living biology in the tank, so the test is wrong.

Reasons nh3 isn't a concern: if it was above safe levels the water would be cloudy due to animals dying, no corals opened, any fish would be dead. Red sea ammonia shows false positives for free ammonia commonly, frequently in posts. There are also zero read posts, it's a mix of 50/50 stuck ammonia/ ammonia ok when dealing with titration ammonia kits

Your tank pictures show ammonia in full control. Additional nh3 proofing: we've done this same sand removal job for 36 pages in the sand rinse thread, removed all at once not nicely in sections, and had some digital ammonia testing using both midstream and working- seneye tests and ammonia control doesn't change from the pre- removal levels.

Reef tanks aren't able to endure free ammonia at .2 constant/ often reported levels.

Removing sand doesn't change the remaining surface area, the live rock.

Live rock is already full of bacteria, we can't make a remaining filter more efficient by adding more bacteria, the attachment points are already used up before removed sand. What's left as rock is either enough for handling tank waste or it's not; giving time for the system to take on bacteria wouldn't work because stacking bacteria on top of bacteria already in place doesn't increase a filters efficiency, it decreases it by decreasing surface area presentation.

If replacing sand beds required more surface area we'd have to add more rock, attachment points. That your current setup stayed alive past 48 hours means it's enough remaining surface area after the removal

I can't figure out why some kits show danger- level nh3 and some don't. Applies here, you had a prior zero stated. It doesn't factor into my take on nh3 here since this mix of .25 or .2 among healthy tanks is so common. What we never see: actual ammonia toxicity in the reef/ tank loss

I can't name one time it's occurred on digital testing confirmed. The resounding clue in online free ammonia posts is the tank always looks fine though claimed to be poisoned by nh3 at irritation levels.

Let me add a bit to Brandon’s observation with regards to the ammonia measurement and the healthy looking aquarium guests. The ammonia kit is measuring total ammonia (observing “0” ppm total NH3 with a test kit is visually difficult at best, so “0” might appear to be 0.2) but it is the free ammonia that is the concern. At your pH and temperature, if you measure a total ammonia of 0.2 ppm, the amount of free ammonia could be around 0.02 ppm. RedSea should have a table to figure this out.

 

[Dan_P]

i’m measuring ammonia with the red sea test kit. before removing sand phosphate was 0.03 and nítrate 0.

When you removed the sand bed you may have reduced the system‘s denitrification capability, leading to a build up of nitrate. The aragonite also served as a sink for PO4. Without it, the daily input of PO4 no longer disappears into the sand.

These are just ideas that I thought might be useful to help you think through the possible causes.

 

[brandon429]

Nice to have that conversion detail on file, .02 aligns with several seneye posts/ fact.

 

[mariano]

thanks for all the answers guys. so i replaced 15 gallons and i dosed 5ml of AmGuard. everything seems fine for now. i will do a water test later and see if anything changes, my main concern is the Phosphate, im not sure why is so high.