Interesting find

[Yates273]

Not sure where I should post this.
I recently went in a shark fishing trip about 25 miles off the Jersey shore and figured let me bring a 5 gallon jug and collect some clean ocean water for my tank. The water we were in was crystal clear so I though this wasn’t a bad thing. Well when I got home that night I decided before I am going to use for my tank I better test the parameters. Let’s just say everything was spot on (Salinity a little low for my tank) 1.022 except ammonia. Ammonia was through the roof off the charts high. What would cause this to be. Needless to say I decided not to use the water and dump it down the drain. My only thought was maybe all the phytoplankton died causing a spike. I thought this was interesting. Maybe you will too. Any thoughts

 

[Reefpuck]

That's interesting. I'm guessing there's lots of hypothetical reasons for it.

 

[reefwiser]

When dealing with the ocean not all the parameters will be “exact” text book values. As there could be run off in one area causing a value to be higher than normal. Ocean currents can sweep this spike far out into the ocean.

 

[jda]

Do not rule out a bad ammonia test kit. It is fresh? If the ammonia in the water was really sky high, then you should have been able to smell it.

 

[Yates273]

For this very reason I tested a few times and ammonia was super high. I then tested my tank and ammonia was fine.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

What was the ammonia level?

Samples of freshly collected seawater often suffer significant die off of organisms that were in it, and that can elevate ammonia.

Usually it takes time for this to happen, but is a known reason to not store fresh ocean water.

 

[Yates273]

Ammonia levels exceeded 8ppm

 

[michael giordano]

Also did you collect it in the same bucket you used to store your bait and such for the fishing trip?

 

[Yates273]

Also did you collect it in the same bucket you used to store your bait and such for the fishing trip?

Lol. No I have several 5 gallon jugs I use to hold fresh and salt RODI water for my tank. I took one of those.

 

[Centerline]

Im guessing that @Randy Holmes-Farley hit it on the head. I collect fresh ocean water off shore regularly and unless you use it pretty fast you will have die off from all of the stuff in it. It's also a good idea to consider running it through a 100 micron filter sock or something to pull all the bugs out. You would be surprised at how much life a gallon of ocean water can have in it.

 

[jordan9095]

sounds like the microganisms all died