Ammonia in my fishless QT. Why?

[QuinnLee512]

I've done 3 50% water changes but can't get the ammonia to go down. Anybody have any idea why I have ammonia considering that the only things in here are corals and a couple of caribsea life rocks? My ammonia is 1, nitrite is .5, nitrates are above 50, and phosphates are also high. My tank has brown algae now. On the bright side, I can get a cuc now.

 

[dwair]

Have you done a proper cycle on this tank? How old is it?

Also do NOT put a CUC in there until the cycle is finished which it isn't judging by your ammonia/Nitrites/Nitrates level. Inverts are sensitive to high nitrates/ammonia.

 

[Spieg]

Can't tell from photos, but do you have any filtration? Also are you feeding the corals anything while in QT?

 

[QuinnLee512]

Have you done a proper cycle on this tank? How old is it?

Also do NOT put a CUC in there until the cycle is finished which it isn't judging by your ammonia/Nitrites/Nitrates level. Inverts are sensitive to high nitrates/ammonia.

I have a cycled DT with no livestock in it. I used DT water to fill up most of the water in the QT. I'll be honest, I wasn't too concerned with whether I would have enough beneficial bacteria because there's not much bioload from corals right? However regardless, why do I have ammonia at all? I don't do any feeding of food and corals don't poop. Or do they? For now I'm dosing prime until I can figure out the source of the ammonia. 50% water changes isn't doing anything.

 

[QuinnLee512]

Can't tell from photos, but do you have any filtration? Also are you feeding the corals anything while in QT?

I have a sponge finger and a hang on filter that hangs on the inside. I fed it reef roids once but that was before doing 3 water changes.

 

[dwair]

I have a cycled DT with no livestock in it. I used DT water to fill up most of the water in the QT. I'll be honest, I wasn't too concerned with whether I would have enough beneficial bacteria because there's not much bioload from corals right? However regardless, why do I have ammonia at all? I don't do any feeding of food and corals don't poop. Or do they? For now I'm dosing prime until I can figure out the source of the ammonia. 50% water changes isn't doing anything.

Yes corals expel waste. You have nothing providing bacteria at all. No live rock, no sand. Water from your DT isn't enough. If you have a local petco, I would grab a bottle of bio spira and also add something to have the bateria latch onto. Like a Marine Pure block or even some rock rubble.

 

[QuinnLee512]

Yes corals expel waste. You have nothing providing bacteria at all. No live rock, no sand. Water from your DT isn't enough. If you have a local petco, I would grab a bottle of bio spira and also add something to have the bateria latch onto. Like a Marine Pure block or even some rock rubble.

I've added Dr Tim's one and only. I have the dry rock for the bacteria and will add some marine pure blocks. Okay you've answered my question around where the ammonia is coming from. I didn't realize that corals poop.

 

[brandon429]

you aren’t using seneye/ digital ammonia so this link applies:

Sustained Ammonia spikes are misreads

The reason you think your reef tank can’t control its ammonia is due to false training from old cycling science. That and you don’t own a seneye on the tank in question: if you did, you wouldn’t ever think your ammonia was out of control...

www.reef2reef.com

full blown normal reefs posted your levels, but not on seneye


you are likely missing tan conversion before reporting ammonia levels and after tan, I bet they’re fine.

post a pic of your ammonia reading in a different room, clear white light for the test and we will apply tan conversion to the reading / pic and it’ll be a little bit more accurate


this tank does not have an ammonia problem there’s a chunk of live rock staring right at us or that may be a large coral colony but it still counts with the other corals in there as functional surface area.

open corals, low bioload, the nitrifiers are stuck to the corals and live rock portion and there’s no bioload to overcome that, plus the water is clean as it is for every example in that misread thread. The tank simply doesn’t have an ammonia issue, we can see in your picture above. You simply have a non digital ammonia test kit issue / but not a free ammonia issue.

 

[dwair]

you aren’t using seneye/ digital ammonia so this link applies:

Sustained Ammonia spikes are misreads

The reason you think your reef tank can’t control its ammonia is due to false training from old cycling science. That and you don’t own a seneye on the tank in question: if you did, you wouldn’t ever think your ammonia was out of control...

www.reef2reef.com

full blown normal reefs posted your levels, but not on seneye


you are missing tan conversion before reporting ammonia levels and after tan, they’re fine.

post a pic of your ammonia reading in a different room, clear white light for the test and we will apply tan conversion to the reading / pic and it’ll be a little bit more accurate


this tank does not have an ammonia problem there’s a chunk of live rock staring right at us or that may be a large coral colony but it still counts with the other corals in there as functional surface area.

open corals, low bioload, the nitrifiers are stuck to the corals and live rock portion and there’s no bioload to overcome that, plus the water is clean as it is for every example in that misread thread. The tank simply doesn’t have an ammonia issue, we can see in your picture above. You simply have a non digital ammonia test kit issue / but not a free ammonia issue.

That is coral, not live rock. I would disagree with this, maybe if had it setup for a year and it all of a sudden showed an ammonia reading, but he JUST set this up. It makes sense. I skimmed through your thread and almost every post is yours and I see you link this all the time as like proven fact.

 

[brandon429]

Coral in that ratio still functions as a filter, coral is high surface area, there’s no source for ammonia there and until someone gets a digital ammonia reading we can’t move forward. You can see how they dug in heels too in the post, it’s common to see no tan ammonia readings as an alert.


this quarantine tank does not have an ammonia issue. It matches every detail from the study thread of 100% misreads. The water would be cloudy and the corals closed up were this not the case. There are lots of examples online and in lfs that use frag tanks with no live rock, no filtration, just the corals themselves as the biofiltration by their inherent surface area


there is only one cause for alert here, just like the study thread, and that’s a non digital no TAN factored common hobby test kit.


the key to spotting misreport threads is no losses are reported in the title, merely a test reading while all else looks fine, that applies here. The op’s stated conflict is correct, there’s no way for free ammonia to be present. Op was second guessing the test kit correctly.

 

[dwair]

Coral in that ratio still functions as a filter, and until someone gets a digital ammonia reading we can’t move forward.

It’s also not showing the common .25, it showing 1.0. That’s not test kit problems. He just set the tank up. Do you truly believe there is no cycle needed?

if that were true I could go down to petco, pick up a 40g breeder, throw a bunch of coral in there and that’s it and I’m cycled? That’s not the way it works.

I see you post a lot of threads and comment on a lot of threads and almost never get responses yet you claim all this knowledge and proven facts and cases and I don’t even show you as having a reef tank.

im not saying you are wrong a lot, but in this case a cycle needs to happen, its valid and makes sense and is proven by the presence of ammonia AND nitrites

 

[brandon429]

at least I link study threads with patterns

Look at how the chemistry forum would assess this thread and it’s stated ammonia issue:

Does Prime actually "Detoxify" free ammonia, NH3?

This started when @Dan_P was looking at measuring NH3 with seneye and was curious about performance near zero NH3. I suggested trying Prime to artificially zero out the NH3 sensor, and the results were weird... so I checked with my seachem kit. Prime by Seachem is commonly used to treat tap...

www.reef2reef.com

there never was free ammonia here, and adding prime although it may skew future ammonia reads didn’t really address anything.

you haven’t stated or linked a reason ammonia is getting into the tank, nor how the bottle bac added initially would fail nor how additives might be impacting stated ammonia levels. I read nothing about TAN needed for the reported level or not

 

[dwair]

at least I link study thread with patterns


I don’t see any from your post history, it’s safer and less accountable just to make paragraphs without any direct examples to track. Look at how the chemistry forum would assess this thread and it’s stated ammonia issue:

Still doesn’t change the fact this tank needs a cycle….

 

[dwair]

at least I link study threads with patterns


I don’t see any from your post history, it’s safer and less accountable just to make paragraphs without any direct examples to track. Look at how the chemistry forum would assess this thread and it’s stated ammonia issue:

Does Prime actually "Detoxify" free ammonia, NH3?

This started when @Dan_P was looking at measuring NH3 with seneye and was curious about performance near zero NH3. I suggested trying Prime to artificially zero out the NH3 sensor, and the results were weird... so I checked with my seachem kit. Prime by Seachem is commonly used to treat tap...

www.reef2reef.com

there never was free ammonia here, and adding prime although it skews future ammonia reads didn’t really address anything.

you haven’t stated or linked a reason ammonia is getting into the tank, nor how the bottle bac added initially would fail nor how additives might be impacting stated ammonia levels. I read nothing about TAN conversion needed for accurate context too from your posts.

He fed the tank, corals expel waste = ammonia. Reef roids count as food for coral.

 

[brandon429]

No it’s a tolerable input, that won’t cause issues/ light feeding.


this tank needs surface area if anything, not more bacteria added as it’s already been dosed from the bottle.

we need corals closed up and cloudy water to back up free ammonia issues, and no dosing of skip cycle bottle bac too

 

[brandon429]

You said there was no rocks


‘couple of caribsea life rocks’

they’re running the same setup as a thousand pico reefs run, only with ten times the dilution.

 

[dwair]

No it’s a tolerable input, that won’t cause issues/ light feeding.


this tank needs surface area if anything, not more bacteria added as it’s already been dosed from the bottle.

I suggested that already, and I suggested the bottle bac BEFORE he said he had added Dr. Tims. So you are suggesting what I did already. Which would also lead to it needs to cycle.

Also are you seriously saying light feeding the tank won't cause ammonia? Thats why we ghost feed tanks that are fishless cycles, to provide an ammonia source which is then converted.

 

[dwair]

You said there was no rocks


couple of caribsea life rocks

Yes I was wrong on that point, I reread. Its dry rock though.

 

[brandon429]

I really do see that setup above as a model of most currently running pico reefs only with more dilution. most pico reefs we can read about on nano-reef.com make that same setup work in a bowl, plus feed. If there were multiple fish above it would seem plausible to believe the kit/ no TAN reported levels.

that being said, the challenge continues legit as that’s not a very high surface area setup like the displays we collected which for sure cannot have ammonia issues two years after running. On the other hand, the lack of surface area is also in the presence of no actual bioload other than light feed, it’s really a fun challenge to consider. Wish we had seneye on this one

there even appears to be a tiny filter on the back with some padding inside

I find it interesting that the state of free ammonia assessment in the hobby is such that we need all the surrounding contextual details to make the best call, few devices simply just give an accurate read.


we need to know what test kit is stating free ammonia issues, if it’s a seachem alert badge the chemistry crew may well indeed agree it’s a real ammonia event sustained due to the feeding


the brown algae stated will uptake substantial ammonia and it’s presence indicates quite a while underwater compared to a tank started just yesterday at least for some of the substrates in the tank if not the actual tank as a whole. Something aged permitted that algae presence and age = plenty of bacteria

 

[Garf]

I reckon you are making your corals angry with excessive water changes, more swings, so they won’t be consuming much of anything, perhaps even producing. These tanks should be cycled for a while, preferably with bacteria from coral colonies, so at least that part is underway.