ammonia spike (please help)

[andiesreef]

please help. i had a peppermint shrimp get sucked up by the filter and die earlier in my 2 mo cycled reef tank with a few softies and an acan in it. a royal gramma, 5 hermit crabs, 5 astrea snails, an emerald crab, and 2 peppermint shrimp have happily resided inside for about a month. i did a 30% water change but maybe it was too little too late. all of my corals have begun to close up, withdrawing their polyps and curling into themselves. my ammonia is near 1ppm. nitrites at 0 and nitrates at <20ppm. is there anything i can do to save my tank? i worked so hard for this and waited diligently for my cycle. no lfs are open due to easter sunday so i probably can't go out and buy anything to fix the problem.

 

[Garf]

please help. i had a peppermint shrimp get sucked up by the filter and die earlier in my 2 mo cycled reef tank with a few softies and an acan in it. a royal gramma, 5 hermit crabs, 5 astrea snails, an emerald crab, and 2 peppermint shrimp have happily resided inside for about a month. i did a 30% water change but maybe it was too little too late. all of my corals have begun to close up, withdrawing their polyps and curling into themselves. my ammonia is near 1ppm. nitrites at 0 and nitrates at >20ppm. is there anything i can do to save my tank? i worked so hard for this and waited diligently for my cycle. no lfs are open due to easter sunday so i probably can't go out and buy anything to fix the problem.

You shouldn’t be getting an ammonia spike from a tiny shrimp if your tank is running properly. You got a pic of the tank? What test kit for ammonia?

 

[brian414899]

Seachem sells a product called prime. It counters ammonia and nitrite spikes. I’d do another 10-15 gallon water change and does with prime

 

[Dan_P]

please help. i had a peppermint shrimp get sucked up by the filter and die earlier in my 2 mo cycled reef tank with a few softies and an acan in it. a royal gramma, 5 hermit crabs, 5 astrea snails, an emerald crab, and 2 peppermint shrimp have happily resided inside for about a month. i did a 30% water change but maybe it was too little too late. all of my corals have begun to close up, withdrawing their polyps and curling into themselves. my ammonia is near 1ppm. nitrites at 0 and nitrates at >20ppm. is there anything i can do to save my tank? i worked so hard for this and waited diligently for my cycle. no lfs are open due to easter sunday so i probably can't go out and buy anything to fix the problem.

@brandon429 , need there be any concern for this cycled tank? This is another example of a high total ammonia reading post cycle. How could this be?

 

[andiesreef]

You shouldn’t be getting an ammonia spike from a tiny shrimp if your tank is running properly. You got a pic of the tank? What test kit for ammonia?

i only have a 20g reef. i can attached pics of the tank and most affected corals. using api test kit which i know gets a bad rep but is all i have and has always worked just fine for me. i'm a new and young reefer so this is devastating on my first tank.

 

[andiesreef]

Seachem sells a product called prime. It counters ammonia and nitrite spikes. I’d do another 10-15 gallon water change and does with prime

i don't think i can make 10-15 gallons of ro water for a while. i only have 5g on hand. and i don't have any prime right now.

 

[Magostini]

If you have 1 ppm of ammonia, change 80% of the water.... And then add bacteria... Dr Tim or Brightwell Microbacter Start Xlm... I would do that

 

[andiesreef]

i don't have any bacteria aside from this api stuff that i know doesn't do anything (tried it multiple times) and i only have enough water to do a 25% water change right now.

 

[Garf]

I don’t believe the shrimp would have been converted into ammonia already. Are you sure it wasn’t just a shed skin?

 

[Zer0]

Even with a 20G tank, a peppermint shrimp shouldn’t cause an ammonia spike like that if the tank was properly cycled. It must be something else.

What equipment are you running on the tank? What do you feed, how much do you feed, and how often?

 

[brian414899]

i don't think i can make 10-15 gallons of ro water for a while. i only have 5g on hand. and i don't have any prime right now.

I get my water from petco you can buy it already made for a dollar a gallon

 

[andiesreef]

Even with a 20G tank, a peppermint shrimp shouldn’t cause an ammonia spike like that if the tank was properly cycled. It must be something else.

ok, update here. this started happening after my bi-weekly water change and i tested my ro water to be safe. i got ammonia readings. so i dechlorinated the water and am waiting on that reading since i heard anecdotal evidence of chloramines being mis-read as ammonia.

 

[andiesreef]

I get my water from petco you can buy it already made for a dollar a gallon

petco is closed rn where i live. also copy-pasting this update -

ok, update here. this started happening after my bi-weekly water change and i tested my ro water to be safe. i got ammonia readings. so i dechlorinated the water and am waiting on that reading since i heard anecdotal evidence of chloramines being mis-read as ammonia.

 

[andiesreef]

I don’t believe the shrimp would have been converted into ammonia already. Are you sure it wasn’t just a shed skin?

no, it was for sure the shrimp. i think it's my ro water. attaching a copy-paste reply to another commenter.

ok, update here. this started happening after my bi-weekly water change and i tested my ro water to be safe. i got ammonia readings. so i dechlorinated the water and am waiting on that reading since i heard anecdotal evidence of chloramines being mis-read as ammonia.

 

[Zer0]

You make your own water with an ro/di unit then, yes? Why would you be using a dechlorinater if so?

 

[Magostini]

i don't have any bacteria aside from this api stuff that i know doesn't do anything (tried it multiple times) and i only have enough water to do a 25% water change right now.

So just change the water, take the shrimp out and measure ammonia. If it is below 5 ppm just wait for the cycling... 3 ppm would be better with more water change

 

[brandon429]

we would indeed hold course, see how the snails and fish aren't dead, water laser clear

now a grinded up shrimp has who knows how many irritants, these aren't like ammonia burns and I claim Dan these non digital kits take a long time to show the quick move back to hundredths for sure (based on pics, it'd be wrecked if uncontrolled, that's minor irritated nbd) and the tank may be back in the thousandths but to be able to predict that rate of rebound we still need more folks on seneye in my opinion.

do another water change, run some common carbon if you have it, again the test kits cause the concern and not the pics. fantastic post sorry that happened but all your other stuff will be fine. change more water matching temp and salinity.

Im looking for any of these posts to state they're losing their clean up crew, or the water smells/hazy, something marked. This is specifically the shock absorber event listed above in my opinion, aside from whatever irritants a grinded shrimp would have vs and ungrinded one

keep us pics updated and water change when you can, matching temp and salinity, and this reef will be fine is the bet. thanks for posting the concerns team it seems the best we can do collectively is try to find patterns that apply to these different presentations until the measurement portion is absolutely locked in/non varied from person to person.

 

[brandon429]

@Dan_P

the only way I can think to test rebound rates will be for someone with a hach or seneye to spike ammonia in test vessels, report that alongside api or red sea, then watch the digital meter for trending down and see if the color tube kits report it as fast/same increment drop. Im not sure how else we can calibrate speed of report for the color tube kits

I know the seneyes did have some misreading kits but the one Jon has and a few others have been so benchmarked, opposite end of the spectrum, and the readings follow trending like this which makes it seem like its legit locked onto nh3:

-he runs it on his large sps reef it runs thousandths. He's part of the intentional nh3 doser's thread...adding in ml's and tracking the rebound rate as avg 5 mins to stasis before the dose

he moves that same slide and meter onto a barely cycled QT, with the only surface area a tiny filter pad and one fish + feed is in place, and the system reports hundredths ppm and held. ***where I got a prior prediction wrong was that did not set off a crash cascade, it just held there. the fish waste output and timing of water changes by Jon simply amounted to the system carrying higher nh3 than a reef does, it held in hundredths without continually rising as I'd thought it would, but he'd restricted surface area too to only one tiny filter grate in the tank and no other media so the hundredths was perfect scaling for the surface area at hand.


he then puts it on a barely cycled reef with coral and basic bioloading and its back to .002, this meter reads tight!

so that's where we stand so far. folks on color kits seem to indicate days of nh3 holding (with those clean pics, happy fish) but the seneye folks do not report that demand delay. all I can do is see the color tube kits as wrong/slow/something is off thought I don't know what. Once we factor in average joe tester/ non chemists sometimes reagent issues sometimes fill level issues... not TAN-factoring the reported levels, not giving the sample long enough to sit before noting, these are all testing noise possibilities imo.

 

[andiesreef]

So just change the water, take the shrimp out and measure ammonia. If it is below 5 ppm just wait for the cycling... 3 ppm would be better with more water change

ok, update here. this started happening after my bi-weekly water change and i tested my ro water to be safe. i got ammonia readings. so i dechlorinated the water and am waiting on that reading since i heard anecdotal evidence of chloramines being mis-read as ammonia.

 

[andiesreef]

we would indeed hold course, see how the snails and fish aren't dead, water laser clear

now a grinded up shrimp has who knows how many irritants, these aren't like ammonia burns and I claim Dan these non digital kits take a long time to show the quick move back to hundredths for sure (based on pics, it'd be wrecked if uncontrolled, that's minor irritated nbd) and the tank may be back in the thousandths but to be able to predict that rate of rebound we still need more folks on seneye in my opinion.

do another water change, run some common carbon if you have it, again the test kits cause the concern and not the pics. fantastic post sorry that happened but all your other stuff will be fine. change more water matching temp and salinity.

Im looking for any of these posts to state they're losing their clean up crew, or the water smells/hazy, something marked. This is specifically the shock absorber event listed above in my opinion, aside from whatever irritants a grinded shrimp would have vs and ungrinded one

keep us pics updated and water change when you can, matching temp and salinity, and this reef will be fine is the bet. thanks for posting the concerns team it seems the best we can do collectively is try to find patterns that apply to these different presentations until the measurement portion is absolutely locked in/non varied from person to person.

(copy-pasted from replying to other commenters) ok, update here. this started happening after my bi-weekly water change and i tested my ro water to be safe. i got ammonia readings. so i dechlorinated the water in the tank and my ammonia dropped instantly to <0.25ppm. not ideal, but my biological filter should be able to process it if the chlorine didn’t kill it all off. i see copepods and other little critters emerging from the rocks in the tank for the night, alive and well, along with happily swimming fish and corals beginning to show signs of re-opening. i'll have to look into my ro water further but for now i'll probably change the water again to be safe with dechlorinator added. i'm shocked my RO filter suddenly spazzed out like that.