Ammonia

Pierce168 · Feb 10, 2021

I got two clownfish and 5 hermit crabs last week. I made sure the tank was cycled before purchasing them. Ammonia was at 0 and now it's at ~0.20 and I see my fish swimming a little erratic. For some reason I can't seem to find clownfish ammonia tolerances on google so I figured you guys are the experts and can help me out. What is a clownfish ammonia tolerance and what's the best way to lower the levels? Thanks in advance! You're saving me and my fish.

Jekyl · Feb 10, 2021

Do a water change

brandon429 · Feb 10, 2021

I bet you have no real ammonia issues, post video of the system or a pic, video is best.

a water change is always ok at any suspect time. Harmless to run for safety. Since you didn’t report all fish dead and cloudy water I didn’t think your ammonia had spiked, a test kit simply read something. If you Google ‘false ammonia reading reef tank‘ youll see fifty thousand examples

any fish issues with brook or crypto are from skipping fallow and qt, they’re not ammonia related. When something is ammonia related, your whole tank is dead and that’s the initial report, like this fella

Upgrade disaster

Recently had a huge leak in our 90 gal reef which forced us to upgrade sooner than expected . The upgrade being a 230 gal with a 48 gal sump . Mistake #1 I added some of the old sand assuming it would be beneficial to have a little bacteria .. I was wrong . Nuked the whole tank killing all fish...

www.reef2reef.com

RobB'z Reef · Feb 10, 2021

Ammonia tolerance per fish species isn't a thing. What kind of system volume are you dealing with? As always, the more context you can give the better answers you'll receive.

brandon429 · Feb 10, 2021

agreed need pics and detail. It’s fun tracing clues off the bare initials though, no uncycled reef could carry all that for a week and feed too and not be a wreck were it not cycled. We can infer lots about his surface area levels off the timing and scarce details so far that’s fun clue hunting. Can’t wait for them full tank shots

also a factor: were he to be only partially cycled vs fully cycled every day the tank will get cloudier until a crash, I bet pics are clean normal water.

a paradoxical outcome is quite possible when people react to false reads they often dump in large volumes of bottle bac for remedy, and this sucks up all the free oxygen challenging the tank for real, though it wasn’t challenged before and just a test kit caused the alarm.

the best clue that someone‘s tank is fully cycled and only a false read is in play is they describe all living reef and only a test kit at .2 for Red Sea and .25 for api, these are the known zeroes for the two brands. And if bioload and feeding have been taking place a week and the tank holds at common zero on those kits then it’s cycled and nothing is wrong.

can’t wait to wake up tomorrow and have the final pics here

I’ll add this to our false ammonia study thread. That is unless the water is smelly, gray, fish dead or hovering near death at the top, all snails and crabs dead in a total wipeout, in that case we will add the thread to our nh3 loss lists. At no time will a test reading determine which thread we link this one to.