Stuff dying one by one and some ammonia readings

[KleineVampir]

Do you have pictures? What are all the parameters

Not that easy for me to share pictures on here, but anyways there's nothing to see. A couple firefish, a couple big cleaner shrimp, and a ton of random clean up crew members, and a bunch of good old GHA. I can attach a slightly dated picture though.

About parameters though, I've tested pretty much everything I could think of. Do I really need to test nitrites? Why on earth would that change? This is a 0 water change tank. Yes I am still fighting algae but it should be pretty stable. I just tested the salinity, it's higher than I thought. About 1.026. I was going for 25 but I guess when I added the sump maybe I made it a little salty. It has a functioning ATO so it should be stable anyways.

 

[KleineVampir]

Oh right, the picture. I guess not everybody follows my build thread!

 

[NotFishyFishGuy]

Not that easy for me to share pictures on here, but anyways there's nothing to see. A couple firefish, a couple big cleaner shrimp, and a ton of random clean up crew members, and a bunch of good old GHA. I can attach a slightly dated picture though.

About parameters though, I've tested pretty much everything I could think of. Do I really need to test nitrites? Why on earth would that change? This is a 0 water change tank. Yes I am still fighting algae but it should be pretty stable. I just tested the salinity, it's higher than I thought. About 1.026. I was going for 25 but I guess when I added the sump maybe I made it a little salty. It has a functioning ATO so it should be stable anyways.

0 water change tank? I think a water change would definitely help get the ammonia down

 

[Malifry97]

Yeah API is known for having false readings

 

[KleineVampir]

0 water change tank? I think a water change would definitely help get the ammonia down

Yeah to some extent it would! However to reduce it by half I'd need to do a 30 gallon water change, and even that is only a half. Water changes are highly inefficient and I disagree with them. I'm fighting the good fight trying to come up with a way to eliminate water changes once and for all! In the meantime I'll grow some algae in the display but one day I hope to beat it!

 

[Greg P]

Make sure that new Marine Pure block is not falling apart

 

[KleineVampir]

Make sure that new Marine Pure block is not falling apart

It's not actually a marine pure block..for the reason you mentioned. I actually got these a few days ago:

 

[Greg P]

Ah, you wrote "type" gotcha.
Could just be a coincidence, but since you've just added them recently they came to mind.
Were there any instructions about cleaning prior to installation?
Trying to narrow down possibilities besides NH3

Seachem Prime is great in an emergency but I prefer to keep a bottle of Seachem AmGuard on hand for these situations.
I don't know if prime just locks up ammonia but the AG bottle states it converts it for bio filtration to remove. And it doesn't skew later tests.

Good luck!

 

[KleineVampir]

Ah, you wrote "type" gotcha.
Could just be a coincidence, but since you've just added them recently they came to mind.
Were there any instructions about cleaning prior to installation?
Trying to narrow down possibilities besides NH3

Seachem Prime is great in an emergency but I prefer to keep a bottle of Seachem AmGuard on hand for these situations.
I don't know if prime just locks up ammonia but the AG bottle states it converts it for bio filtration to remove. And it doesn't skew later tests.

Good luck!

I rinsed them with RO water. Maybe not forever but I thought I did an ok job! Though things were on the decline before the addition of the blocks. The blocks are basically not doing anything...aside from displacing water which probably upped my salinity a bit, now that I think of it. The ATO would have stopped for a while because of the added volume. Salinity is a little high, 1.026 which probably isn't helping things either, but aside from that the blocks probably won't do anything for quite some time. But when they do I should not have any problems with ammonia, nitrite, and hopefully even nitrates! Either way I'm gonna seed them tomorrow with some microbacter 7.

 

[Greg P]

Though things were on the decline before the addition of the blocks.

Guess I missed that if you mentioned it earlier

 

[KleineVampir]

Guess I missed that if you mentioned it earlier

All good, pretty sure I didn't mention it. It is pretty close though..the bad events and putting in the blocks. Though some snails were dying beforehand so I still think the ammonia level was probably wearing on them at that point. But what would the blocks do? The sump is on the floor and it has to get pumped up like 4 or 5 feet to get into the tank. Hopefully nothing bad could manage to get up that far. I thought I rinsed them pretty decently, a lot of stuff came off of them.