Help! Ammonia spike in QT tanks

[Lilnoelle80]

I’m sure I made a newb mistake in thinking that using live rock from my display tank in QT tanks with sponge filters from established freshwater tanks would be sufficient to avoid issues with ammonia/nitrites in my quarantine tanks. I noticed yesterday what appeared to be bacterial bloom in one of my tanks and my yellow mimic tang temporarily housed there acting stressed. I dosed the tank with Amquel plus and did a 50% water change as soon as I noticed it. I checked ammonia and was 0.25, so had likely been 0.5.
The fish looked poorly and ended up dying overnight. When this happened yesterday, I decided to check ammonia levels on another quarantine tank, with a orange shoulder tang in it. Ammonia was 1.0. That fish didn’t look distressed at the time. I dosed it with amquell plus and added some nitrifying bacteria and grabbed some sponge from my display tank (that I forgot I had tucked in the sump). The tank is a 20g.
Today, the orange shoulder is looking stressed.
I checked specific gravity and it was 1.30. Yesterday it was 1.26. I wonder if the sponge had some extra salt deposited in it....
I’m considering adding the fish to my display tank as that is a more stable environment... but I know there are risks associated with that. I have had the orange shoulder a week and it is eating and shown no sign of disease, but a week isn’t very long...

 

[brandon429]

one challenge is this: amquel causes false positive reads. the pre-amquel measures causing the dosing of it are also found stated in full running reef tanks.


generally QT tanks are low surface area so that meds can be flushed in and out, or their primary media is a sponge or a centralized cleanable item not likely to chemically bind medicines like rock will.

if you used rock its a very powerful ammonia scrub, your initial calculation was correct. that doesn't mean it was not free ammonia that killed the fish, sure could have been but its handy to also at least point out that's what most non seneye test kits read (your initial .25) on a full running reef in no distress. in the setting of QT it seemed alarming here, but not by measure. only a few test kits will read zero in a running reef, about 60-70% in my opinion are the .25=safe zone.

without seneye we are literally just guessing when it comes to those color charted ones. any two brands are likely to show different test results on the same sample...that inconsistent. but seneyes seem to tune up to thousandths ppm conversion rates shown, which matches oceanic data at least in reef zones. perhaps starting off with the amquel as a preventative next round might help, added about two hours after the fish was added to the tank already prepped with some live filtration surface area of some kind. one pound of live rock should work for sure, medium sized chunk but they absorb meds too that can't be rinsed out. sponge filter might be best

certain meds might have killed bac the live rock ability compared to other approaches that use the amquel in small repeating additions to make up for burned surface area. that and water changes.

 

[Lilnoelle80]

one challenge is this: amquel causes false positive reads. the pre-amquel measures causing the dosing of it are also found stated in full running reef tanks.


generally QT tanks are low surface area so that meds can be flushed in and out, or their primary media is a sponge or a centralized cleanable item not likely to chemically bind medicines like rock will.

if you used rock its a very powerful ammonia scrub, your initial calculation was correct. that doesn't mean it was not free ammonia that killed the fish, sure could have been but its handy to also at least point out that's what most non seneye test kits read (your initial .25) on a full running reef in no distress. in the setting of QT it seemed alarming here, but not by measure. only a few test kits will read zero in a running reef, about 60-70% in my opinion are the .25=safe zone.

without seneye we are literally just guessing when it comes to those color charted ones. any two brands are likely to show different test results on the same sample...that inconsistent. but seneyes seem to tune up to thousandths ppm conversion rates shown, which matches oceanic data at least in reef zones. perhaps starting off with the amquel as a preventative next round might help, added about two hours after the fish was added to the tank already prepped with some live filtration surface area of some kind. one pound of live rock should work for sure, medium sized chunk but they absorb meds too that can't be rinsed out. sponge filter might be best

certain meds might have killed bac the live rock ability compared to other approaches that use the amquel in small repeating additions to make up for burned surface area. that and water changes.

I was a bit surprised that the ammonia reading was slow slow as it was in the first tank. It was definitely higher in the tank with the orange shoulder tang (1ppm). I’m also concerned that the salinity is so high. I’m going to test it again tonight, but the orange shoulder is acting very skittish and I’m concerned I’ll stress it more no matter what I do.

 

[brandon429]

hey can u post a pic curious to see the ratios/basic tank size to fish to rock zone


placement of the media matters too, I saw one qt setup with a few pvc elbows in the display and some slate, but the biomedia was down in a sump. waste from fish mixes around a lot in the water up top/low surface area contact and then only gets oxidized as the portions that are routed down below and back up. various pumps setups and currents allow for efficient exchange or not in this arrangement

that qt example would have been more efficient changing the contact area/moving surface area up top in the waste swirl for direct contact vs having to add more. it was inefficient packed away in a sump and they had constant higher level ammonia readings than this above.

 

[Lilnoelle80]

Sure. I can’t do it right now, will as soon as possible. I think part of the problem is lack of a powerhead in the tank. Only having a sponge filter in addition to the rock isn’t really moving the water well. I’ve since fixed that problem.

 

[Lilnoelle80]

Here’s a brief video. I think adding the power heads to increase flow made a big difference. The ammonia is now negligible with my kit. I haven’t checked nitrites yet. Specific gravity is back at 1.26. I suspect I did something wrong when I got 1.3 earlier with my refractometer.

 

[Lilnoelle80]

Or a pic if you prefer.

 

[brandon429]

Nice. I would expect that degree of live rock and position to handle it even with minimal flow, the live rock is s strong scrub.