I am guilty of not checking my levels lately and I did finally and my ammonia was at 2.0!! All my other levels were fine but my ammonia is high. I ran out of prime so I can’t dose that until I buy more tomorrow. Anything I can do to lower it in the meantime??? Or will my fish be ok until then??? Also I think someone might have died not sure but I can’t find my blenny. He’s MIA at the moment and I’m hoping he pops back out.
Rmckoy
7500 Club Member
Just 1 blenny to increase ammonia that high ?
cuc should have cleaned it up prior to getting to that stage ?
JosephM
Valuable Member
Im purely assuming. We don’t know OP’s filtration, water change frequency, amount of CUC. Say they haven’t done a water change in a while, don’t have bristle worms, and it died in a hole in the rock. Many possibilities when facing the unknown.
You have no free ammonia I bet
www.reef2reef.com
prime causes misreads
this is all assuming you’ve cycled the tank, most keepers here only use fish in a cycled tank.
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
prime causes misreads
this is all assuming you’ve cycled the tank, most keepers here only use fish in a cycled tank.
It’s been a year. Wel established tank. Corals and crabs, snails , 2 clowns, 1 chromis and 1 fairy wrasse. I’ve never had a problem. Just did a water change last weekend. Lots of coraline and a small bit of red algae on the sand bed.
Excellent. its fascinating to see you don’t have a problem based on the thread above
post pics of your reef, evenly distributed fish are the best proof, if they’re all hovering at the top thats proof there is ammonia
ammonia alerts are misreads caused by api and red sea, but rarely if ever a calibrated working seneye
all this is part of the new updated rules for tank cycling. Buried in the tenets is this rule: ammonia can never drift out of spec in a post cycle tank, not ever. Since we aren’t freezing, boiling or adding antibiotics, anyone’s cycle remains as long as there’s water.
post pics of your reef, evenly distributed fish are the best proof, if they’re all hovering at the top thats proof there is ammonia
ammonia alerts are misreads caused by api and red sea, but rarely if ever a calibrated working seneye
all this is part of the new updated rules for tank cycling. Buried in the tenets is this rule: ammonia can never drift out of spec in a post cycle tank, not ever. Since we aren’t freezing, boiling or adding antibiotics, anyone’s cycle remains as long as there’s water.
I think I know why authors won’t touch the subject in print. It’s evolving too fast to pin down.
lol being able to edit here is a big pull for the site.
We barely got seneye a few years ago and streamlining them all is taking time
then we need to add a few years to simply believe what a seneye shows and counter all known cycling info with it, a few more years for them to write new rules, so we are good in disarray till I’m eighty.
I also believe there has been an astounding coincidental retail benefit from operating in the view that bacteria are weak, need us, and certainly need refreshed. The omitted truth is surface area science, that’s where we are lacking and the man is gaining cash
even before pics here, we can infer so much about the reef in question and it all relates to ammonia control.
this is a multiple fish tank, fed and running, beyond 48 hours. No fish live fed and right beyond 48 hours in an uncycled tank. We are dealing with a cycled reef and by extension enough surface area in the expected common arrangements. Even if someone dumped bottle bac and added all those fish, its been 48 hours and the bac are adhered to all surfaces anyway.
people who run wastewater plants assure us that high flow high contact active surface area being presented fish waste will never uncycle. The sand rinse thread shows us that removing sand instantly is ok, because even the live rocks alone are enough *surface area* in any reef to handle all waste.
so, this tank is likely double redundant on surface area with rocks and sand, or sump add ons.
then we have the thread where people dump raw ammonia in their *reefs* (because its raw nitrogen blast of food) in the chem forum, and seneye shows all reefs can instantly take on more bioload than they’re used to, without bacterial ramp up.
that ability is here, in this fish reef above, so ammonia never spiked due to surface area rules and the only kit we can rely on to prove it is a seneye, or .001 of the test reads on this site pun intended
the fact the title of this thread refers to a test read, and not a stated visual tank condition, is 99.9% of the troubleshooting already done.
lol being able to edit here is a big pull for the site.
We barely got seneye a few years ago and streamlining them all is taking time
then we need to add a few years to simply believe what a seneye shows and counter all known cycling info with it, a few more years for them to write new rules, so we are good in disarray till I’m eighty.
I also believe there has been an astounding coincidental retail benefit from operating in the view that bacteria are weak, need us, and certainly need refreshed. The omitted truth is surface area science, that’s where we are lacking and the man is gaining cash
even before pics here, we can infer so much about the reef in question and it all relates to ammonia control.
this is a multiple fish tank, fed and running, beyond 48 hours. No fish live fed and right beyond 48 hours in an uncycled tank. We are dealing with a cycled reef and by extension enough surface area in the expected common arrangements. Even if someone dumped bottle bac and added all those fish, its been 48 hours and the bac are adhered to all surfaces anyway.
people who run wastewater plants assure us that high flow high contact active surface area being presented fish waste will never uncycle. The sand rinse thread shows us that removing sand instantly is ok, because even the live rocks alone are enough *surface area* in any reef to handle all waste.
so, this tank is likely double redundant on surface area with rocks and sand, or sump add ons.
then we have the thread where people dump raw ammonia in their *reefs* (because its raw nitrogen blast of food) in the chem forum, and seneye shows all reefs can instantly take on more bioload than they’re used to, without bacterial ramp up.
that ability is here, in this fish reef above, so ammonia never spiked due to surface area rules and the only kit we can rely on to prove it is a seneye, or .001 of the test reads on this site pun intended
the fact the title of this thread refers to a test read, and not a stated visual tank condition, is 99.9% of the troubleshooting already done.
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*what if a fish dies/ reasonable question
seneyes show dead tang fish in the chem forum not registering above thousandths ppm just like the running tank (tang wedged in rocks dead they have a seneye on the tank). The ammonia dosing crew exploits this ability to go well above a current bioload rate without ramp up, I expect all reef tanks will handle fish loss just fine on seneye and when seeing the reef, but api will cause alarms to the moon and back.
seneyes show dead tang fish in the chem forum not registering above thousandths ppm just like the running tank (tang wedged in rocks dead they have a seneye on the tank). The ammonia dosing crew exploits this ability to go well above a current bioload rate without ramp up, I expect all reef tanks will handle fish loss just fine on seneye and when seeing the reef, but api will cause alarms to the moon and back.
Yea I usually don’t and they have been swimming all over the tank so it may be a misread? I’ll check again when I get home from work in an hour or two. Water change etc. I don’t even feed that heavily at all
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Take no action for sure, it’s just perfect.
it’s best to not test for ammonia or nitrite since the tank is locked in.
ammonia cannot drift out of spec, it can’t do anything unpredictable ever at any time in reefing, due to aged surface area and rocks and sand. The old rules would have us doubt it endlessly which is by extension to doubt wastewater science and microbiology in general...but that’s what they wrote for us to learn by, to be spurned into purchase action by, only rogues disavow the test kit
that’s a zero (thousandths ppm) reef at all times unless the water goes gray and smelly, then something has truly happened.
open corals: they will close up tight in any free ammonia.
it’s best to not test for ammonia or nitrite since the tank is locked in.
ammonia cannot drift out of spec, it can’t do anything unpredictable ever at any time in reefing, due to aged surface area and rocks and sand. The old rules would have us doubt it endlessly which is by extension to doubt wastewater science and microbiology in general...but that’s what they wrote for us to learn by, to be spurned into purchase action by, only rogues disavow the test kit
that’s a zero (thousandths ppm) reef at all times unless the water goes gray and smelly, then something has truly happened.
open corals: they will close up tight in any free ammonia.
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I have discussed cases like this with @brandon429 so I don’t think that I am starting any wars with the following comments
What test are you using? API tends to produce confusing colors below 0.5 ppm. I would not expect there to be confusion at 2 ppm. Other nitrogen compounds can cause ammonia tests to produce false positives, but I would not expect them to produce a 2 ppm result.
What is your pH? Just in case there is ammonia present which seems unlikely, don’t do anything to raise your pH. You measured total ammonia, most of the toxic form, NH3, is at a very low concentration below pH 8, the rest is the non-toxic form NH4+. Lowering the pH further, increases the margin of safety further. In an emergency, if there was one, this might be the fastest way to help.
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I don’t think so. Prime works by chemically combining with NH3. This combination though falls apart during the ammonia test and makes it look like Prime isn’t working. If anything the apparent 0.25 reading stays the same.
I think you have to work hard to get a false 2 ppm reading. That is a very deep color. Maybe test vial or other test equipment was contaminated. I am scratching my head thinking of ways to fool the ammonia test. Maybe the ammonia spike is real and system pH is low. That might let the system survive.
With low pH I expect to see visual problems in pics soon, coral loss
and the source for constant ammonia able to overcome known ability of live rock rock to take on orders more ammonia above steady state (ammonia dosing thread on seneyes) needs to be revealed here. That thread shows ten minutes rebound in nh3 dosed tanks. A blenny cant do it, we’ve tracked whole tangs before.
when pics show distress and that links to a test kit, I’d believe the possibility the kit is right, we don’t see consequence free ammonia noncontrol, not ever. That system even has rapid plant uptake in its favor. It is reasonable to infer based on recent seneye testing matched to fish behavior any system with two clowns acting normally is below tenths and into hundredths ppm at worst, maybe the api is registering that change if a motion has occurred.
and the source for constant ammonia able to overcome known ability of live rock rock to take on orders more ammonia above steady state (ammonia dosing thread on seneyes) needs to be revealed here. That thread shows ten minutes rebound in nh3 dosed tanks. A blenny cant do it, we’ve tracked whole tangs before.
when pics show distress and that links to a test kit, I’d believe the possibility the kit is right, we don’t see consequence free ammonia noncontrol, not ever. That system even has rapid plant uptake in its favor. It is reasonable to infer based on recent seneye testing matched to fish behavior any system with two clowns acting normally is below tenths and into hundredths ppm at worst, maybe the api is registering that change if a motion has occurred.
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