Thoughts on levels??

[mihkey]

Our tank is fairly new, about 3 weeks old now with 2 clownfish and a couple snails. What are your thoughts on this? We had an ammonia spike after our snails died, and we got that down and got new snails and everything looks good, and the fish are not in distress.

 

[Reefahholic]

@taricha @Dan_P

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

What size is your tank? Dead snails should not produce an ammonia spike.

I would say you are going a little fast, I don't even add my first fish until 3-4 weeks after building a tank.

 

[mihkey]

What size is your tank? Dead snails should not produce an ammonia spike.

I would say you are going a little fast, I don't even add my first fish until 3-4 weeks after building a tank.

The tank is 36 gallons. I actually go on here a lot to ask questions as I am new to saltwater tanks and have been doing research. We were not intending to get fish until after a month and a few days after we did QuickStart and stress+ my boyfriends mom surprised us with a pair of clownfish and 2 turbos. Our turbos died and I didn’t know it did until I lifted it up and it came out of the shell and smelled horrid. We fixed the ammonia and everything seemed good until I just tested the waters again and these were the results.
-Ashley(Mikey’s gf)

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

I would guess the turbos died of starvation. They eat algae, and a 3 week old tank has no algae yet. Seems to me like you've done your homework, cannot control well-meaning relatives.

You have ammonia and zero nitrite and zero nitrate, so the tank is still cycling, just let it all marinate for a while, until ammonia drops to zero and nitrate starts rising.

Once you start seeing some algae growth, you should then slowly add some cleaning inverts, add more as needed as the algae grows.

 

[mihkey]

I would guess the turbos died of starvation. They eat algae, and a 3 week old tank has no algae yet. Seems to me like you've done your homework, cannot control well-meaning relatives.

You have ammonia and zero nitrite and zero nitrate, so the tank is still cycling, just let it all marinate for a while, until ammonia drops to zero and nitrate starts rising.

Once you start seeing some algae growth, you should then slowly add some cleaning inverts, add more as needed as the algae grows.

I figured that’s why they died; and I warned them that they were most likely going to die from that. I tried algae wafers but it did nothing for them unfortunately but the new snails seem to be thriving, we got the nassarius snails and our clownfish seem very happy too when the levels bump I tend to do minimal water changes and keep chemicals to a minimum to also let the tank do it’s thing. We have live rock and live sand so I think they play a huge role in it

 

[taricha]

The nitrite produced tells you that your system is processing the ammonia and handling that little hiccup. Looks like things are working fine.

 

[Dan_P]

Our tank is fairly new, about 3 weeks old now with 2 clownfish and a couple snails. What are your thoughts on this? We had an ammonia spike after our snails died, and we got that down and got new snails and everything looks good, and the fish are not in distress.

The total ammonia reading looks real, 0.5 ppm maybe. The free ammonia is very roughly around 0.05 ppm. That is a bit high for fish, not lethal but possibly irritating. No need to panic though.