Testing water after feeding corals

[Ceri720]

I did a water change today and afterwards I fed the corals. I feed them about 2X a week. I went to do my array of water testing and the ammonia was up 0.25ppm. I wondered if this was because I was testing within the hour after feeding. Any thoughts on when to test parameters? Since I had a rough busy week I was just catching up on things on the tank and had not thought ahead on what I was doing first etc - still new to this.

 

[Spare time]

There is no way coral feeding would raise it to 0.25. Even in an uncycled tank, that is too fast for food to break down into ammonia. You can confirm this with a nitrite test as nitrite takes longer to be removed and is more likely to appear if the biofilter is disturbed

 

[Rmckoy]

There is no way food will break down to ammonia only 1 hour .

depends on the rest kit used , a false positive is possible .
how old is the system being tested ?

 

[Ceri720]

Tank is 13.5 gal EVO - 2.5 months set up. I always get 0.25ppm and even sometimes in just salt RODI - using Master API kit. I have heard all the issues with test kits etc. Today I got 0.5 ammonia , 0 nitrite and 5-10 nitrate (sometimes color just seems between). Tank seems to be settling in - corals growing, some faster than others.

 

[Spare time]

Tank is 13.5 gal EVO - 2.5 months set up. I always get 0.25ppm and even sometimes in just salt RODI - using Master API kit. I have heard all the issues with test kits etc. Today I got 0.5 ammonia , 0 nitrite and 5-10 nitrate (sometimes color just seems between). Tank seems to be settling in - corals growing, some faster than others.

No need to panic. If you have 0 nitrite, I doubt you have any ammonia present. Honestly there is no reason to test ammonia at this point unless you remove a lot of rock, your sand, etc.