28g Deep Clean - Ammonia, No Nitrites/Nitrates

[Matt Brown]

Hi all,

I have a 3 year old, 28g reef tank that has been humming along until recently. This past weekend I performed a deep clean, including equipment scrubbing, deep sand bed replacement and 60% water change, as well as removal of 25% of my existing LR. It resulted in an Ammonia spike and loss of some coral, fish and snails. Since the spike I removed dead, added live bacteria, performed 10% water changes twice a day, turned the lights off, and have not fed my 1 living damsel. My Ammonia levels are stuck between 0.25 and 0.50ppm however my nitrites and nitrates have remained at zero (cross-tested with both sera and API test kits). Do I need to wait for a nitrogen cycle that has yet to play itself out (at these high ammonia levels) and perform more water changes to get it down? Should I bother dosing the tank with a conditioner and lose the ability to test the levels? I would like my remaining damsel and coral to survive.

Tank Specs:
28gal, 18" by 18"
3 year old LR (front and filter box)
New deep sand bed (3-4")
2 Rapid LED 12 Mixed LED PAR38, 80 deg Lamps
Pump included with cube plus Hydor Koralia Pump
Chaeto with lighting in filter box
No skimmer
ATO

Living Stock:
1 Yellow Tail Blue Damsel
Green Devil's Hand Leather
Blue Xenia Colony

Deceased Stock:
1 Yellow Tail Blue Damsel
10 Frogspawn Heads
Blue Mushroom Colony
Green Eyed Chalice
Unknown SPS Frag

Thank you in advance,
Matt

 

[CodyRVA]

Just curious, but what prompted you to do this deep clean? Adding live bacteria is good, but stop doing water changes. You're likely removing the bacteria you're putting into the tank to begin with. I'd either buy a better test kit or ask your LFS to test it. I have no experience with sera, but API kits are a joke. Essentially, you removed a vast majority of the bacteria in the system and what remains is unable to process the bio load, thus the loss of livestock. Your system is probably going through a mini cycle to rebuild itself. I would setup a small 10g tank with fresh saltwater, heater, powerhead, etc and put all of your livestock in it and leave your main tank fix itself. Continue to feed the main tank so it doesn't bottom out. You may or may not have to do this, but its a gamble. It really depends how quickly the system recovers and how much bacteria you removed.

 

[brandon429]

I love these threads, ammonia tracing is the easiest molecule to work with in reefing even with no testing

the cause of your loss is likely detritus and partial cleaning. if a cloud of waste was ever kicked up around the sensitive animals, that started the loss issue

partial detritus pockets unremoved. they were disturbed in the presence of live animals, that's the loss cause. Live rock can be a suspect...we don't move it for years and its pocketing gets fixed inside and stuck to the bottom a certain way

we move the live rock around dislodging it somehow, liberating it out into the water, and that's raw ammonia which was formerly leaking out as slow nitrate because in position it wasn't a leaking nightmare, it was a slow pocket of waste.

at some point after re assembly, waste was still in the system did you clean your rocks out well? post a full tank shot so we can see details

another option is one of the major animals died from non acclimation back into the tank, but typically we'd notice that and remove his carcass.

The tests you are using provide no useful data on ammonia, we are better off with tank pics. nitrite accuracy cannot be ascertained with API and nitrites don't matter anyway, simply don't test for them its all about ammonia

one fascinating detail about ammonia from impartial deep cleaning is that it lasts only 24 hours :) so 1 day after the event provided the left in waste is excessive, in a tank of all live rock and at least new wet pack sand, but not dry sand, a living reef is expected to digest plenty of ammonia within 24 hours as the waste pockets typically settle by then, and that's the digestion ability of live substrates anyway.

Live rock rarely has dieoff unless you leave it in the air hours or add meds to it.

bacteria never die off no matter how much you cleaned, all the critical bac still remained and something leaked to overcome them.

if your ammonia readings are true, simply smelling the top tank water can confirm. that amount would be like a mild dead skunk you can smell through your air vents a mile up the road.

im curious as to where the waste was that caused the recycle

 

[Matt Brown]

CodyRVA - I did it for a few reasons: I was neglecting the tank for a couple months and red wiry algae took over a rock the size of a baseball, I wanted to reconfigure the tank and sell off some overgrown coral, and my skimmer died.

CodyRVA and brandon429 - I understand the bacteria fallout being the cause. This is why I added bacteria back in and did small water changes to reduce toxicity. Sounds like my guess on a mini-cycle is correct, but the source of the bio load is a bit confusing. My only guess is that it came from the LR/LR algae death. However everything was taken out during the cleaning process so releasing pockets of ammonia was not the culprit. If you read my message you will also note there was only one small damsel that perished and I removed him soon after death. Photo attached of the current state. Note I moved the frogspawn into a bucket once I noticed the spike and put some of the heads that still had green back in after a water change (yes I am delusional - they are likely toast). It sounds like the best next step is to set-up a separate tank per CodyRVA. Can I use a clean bucket?

brandon429 - The rock in the center of the photo was scrubbed clean. The others didn't have much algae on them so I only did a few spot cleanings.

Side note, I tested using a sera kit as well. Is this as bad as API?

 

[brandon429]

given new sand, no detritus, that tank is so clean above that I deem no ammonia as of now even if it says some. how does it smell, just opening the lid and taking whiff


bacterial loss is never the cause of a recycle its always waste or loss of higher life. the bac you added was harmless and incidental. even if the sand you used was dry, the purple live rock lost no bac and would handle all but the heaviest fish bioload which you do not have. people go bare bottom instantly all the time leaving only their lr and associated substrates as filters, you did a version of that only if your new sand was wet it was likely live anyway/.

if the sand was wet before use, caribsea arrive alive stuff, that backs up the no ammonia theory. You may have had 1 spike, but if that was yesterday its done deal all cruising now. the way you know there is no trace ammonia in there now is because the corals have extended polyps and the snail isn't dead. if there were any persistent ammonia they couldn't take that for 24 hours straight and your tank will smell bad right now. either way, im glad you rip cleaned who wants to take 5 months of partial work storing waste the whole time. take the leap, reset. I do this commonly on my tank and have no recycle because im waste and acclimation careful

 

[Matt Brown]

brandon429 - It smells like saltwater, nothing fishy/stinky about it. Sand was dry. Ammonia spike was Saturday night after finishing the clean. Lost all but the slow dying damsel overnight. Today it does look like it is improving. The other fish came out of hiding in the past hour.

So do nothing and just let it fix itself?

 

[brandon429]

yep I call good

part of the way we make the 24 hour call is because tanks with known cycled rocks can digest a few ppm ammonia to zero within 24 hours, so a few days has elapsed and nothing in that nice clean setup is pumping 2ppm raw ammonia.

 

[theMerchant]

heavily stirring up the sand bed is never good. Sorry about your lost fish

 

[Matt Brown]

Thanks for your help and insights brandon429. A hard lesson learned but my fingers are crossed that it improves from here. The fish is starting to swim around to get the lay of the land so I am optimistic.