Please HELP - Seneye Ammonia reading doesn't make sense.

[lpsouth1978]

I am in the process of cycling my Waterbox 230.6. It has only been running saltwater for about a week. I have 120lbs of Reel Reef rock (the fake purple stuff) in the DT and 3 - 8"x4" Marine Pure blocks in the sump. When I started my cycle, I added 4 large bottles of Bio-Spira and a 4oz bottle of Dr. Tim's Ammonium Chloride. According to the directions on the bottle, this should have been enough to get the Ammonia to about 2ppm. According to my Seneye though, it only got to about 0.180 ppm. I thought that maybe the Seneye was showing ppb, but it says it is ppm.

In order to double check the readings I tried using an API test and it showed about 1ppm. So what is up? Do i need to keep dosing until the Seneye shows 2ppm or trust that the API is more accurate? Has anyone else had similar results using the Seneye?

Let me add that I dumped another 4oz bottle of Dr. Tims Ammonium Chloride in this morning @ 10am which brought the Seneye reading up as high as 0.126ppm. It is now almost 12 hours later and the reading is 0.030ppm. Also, my API Nitrite shows about 2ppm and Nitrates are 5 -10ppm.

 

[Crabs McJones]

Did you soak the slide in tank water for 48 hours before use?

 

[lpsouth1978]

Did you soak the slide in tank water for 48 hours before use?

I did. I have a couple more slides I could try, but I hate to waste a slide.

 

[Unholy_Rigatoni]

There's a thread https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/seneye-ammonia-reading.593800/ about how the seneye reads ammonia differently (free vs total) from titration kits.

When I dosed the full four drops per gallon of Dr Tim's I only achieved a maximum ammonia reading of 0.7 on the seneye.

 

[lpsouth1978]

There's a thread https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/seneye-ammonia-reading.593800/ about how the seneye reads ammonia differently (free vs total) from titration kits.

When I dosed the full four drops per gallon of Dr Tim's I only achieved a maximum ammonia reading of 0.7 on the seneye.

Thanks for that link. It seems like The Seneye is giving accurate measurements, it is just testing differently than most test kits.

 

[brandon429]

isn't real reef rock already cured/shows up wet with coralline> I googled it to see that?

 

[lpsouth1978]

isn't real reef rock already cured/shows up wet with coralline> I googled it to see that?

No, it is dry man made rock that is painted purple to look like coralline encrusted rock.