That is so informative thank you. What would u do to save the fish and get past this cycle without fish death I’m not attached to the corals but I am the fish and inverts?
I believe the seachem ammonia badge only measures the toxic form. I'd get one to use it for continuous monitoring. There is no way for a testing error with the badge. You can get it at your lfs or Petco.
Do you know what the ammonia is coming from? Important to remove dead or almost dead stuff imho.
I suggest three things:
1) waterchange. For reasons beyond the scope of this thread, synthetic seawater does have ammonia in it (just a little) when freshly mixed... But way less than 8 ppm. If you do a 30% WC soon and another in a few days, you will dilute the ammonia quickly, provided that you are not somehow adding more (from decaying marine life).
2) On that note, unless your fish are starving, substantially reduce or hold off on feeding for a couple of days while you figure this out.
3) consider adding something like purigen, which can directly absorb ammonia asa temporary measure.
4) add some bottled bacteria. Several are good. Some claim to be fast acting. I have had luck with one called biospira. It's available via your local Petco. Add it as if you are setting up a new tank. The bacteria that convert ammonia to nitrite work more quickly than the ones that convert. Nitrite to nitrate, so this will still get you out of ammonia land. Nitrite is either non toxic or minimally toxic to marine fish. There are whole threads this you can read if you want some majorly circular debates.
I have never personally used prime, so hopefully other folks will chime in.
