300g tank ammonia after changing rocks and adding new fish

[Miami Reef]

I added new fish and decided I did not like my rock structure. I took out many of the rocks, and a few days later I bought 40 lbs of live rock from LFS.

Although I'm running phosphate silicate remover, I am seeing some diatoms on the rocks.

API ammoni test .25
API nitrites 0
Salifert Nitrates 0

I dosed prime.

My lights were on a pretty high intensity but I googled and it said that nitrification bacteria grow best in the dark, so I closed my lights off.

I had some of the new fish die on me.

Should I dose prime every 48 hours, or should I do it once a day?

Any tips for me because I just got a big water change done 3 days ago and I dosed prime on that day. Will prime actually work for 48 hours because my fish are still producing more ammonia. I think I should dose every day?

How can I speed up the bacteria growth? I'm thinking of maintaining the addition of prime and just waiting for the bacteria to naturally catch up.

Tank is about 300g. Maybe a little more with the sump included.

 

[ZoWhat]

Tap water?

 

[Miami Reef]

No tap water. I use RODI and my TDS is 0.

The removal of the majority of my old rocks, plus the addition of new rocks, plus the stirring of sand and addition of new fish is causing my tank to go through a cycle.

 

[nereefpat]

0.25 ppm ammonia on an API kit is basically zero. I would just monitor that for now, and not do anything else, unless the reading starts to get worse.

Was the tank cycled before?

 

[ZoWhat]

How old is this 300?

 

[Miami Reef]

0.25 ppm ammonia on an API kit is basically zero. I would just monitor that for now, and not do anything else, unless the reading starts to get worse.

Was the tank cycled before?

Ok. Tank has been running for 2-3 years.

 

[brandon429]

don't worry its fine. ammonia resolved in ten mins, api takes two mos to reflect. you used a valid source of pure skip cycle rock, no harm was done other that welling up a little waste then things went back to norm, especially in that dilution.

your real ammonia levels are .00X thousandths, not tenths as stated from api or red sea

we track what adding new fish to live rock does in seneye threads...it causes no change. if we add more fish to existing live rock, the ammonia control stays the same it doesn't go down, that's what mis reading causes us to think.

 

[Azedenkae]

I added new fish and decided I did not like my rock structure. I took out many of the rocks, and a few days later I bought 40 lbs of live rock from LFS.

Although I'm running phosphate silicate remover, I am seeing some diatoms on the rocks.

API ammoni test .25
API nitrites 0
Salifert Nitrates 0

I dosed prime.

My lights were on a pretty high intensity but I googled and it said that nitrification bacteria grow best in the dark, so I closed my lights off.

I had some of the new fish die on me.

Should I dose prime every 48 hours, or should I do it once a day?

Any tips for me because I just got a big water change done 3 days ago and I dosed prime on that day. Will prime actually work for 48 hours because my fish are still producing more ammonia. I think I should dose every day?

How can I speed up the bacteria growth? I'm thinking of maintaining the addition of prime and just waiting for the bacteria to naturally catch up.

Tank is about 300g. Maybe a little more with the sump included.

You don't really need to dose prime when your ammonia reads 0.25 ppm with the API test kit. I hypothesize that once there is anything at all that can be forming ammonia, you'll read *something* with the API test kit. Provided there are already ammonia-oxidizing microbes, they are probably taking care of the ammonia produced, just that there may be a baseline ammonia produced that are yet to be oxidized by the nitrifiers prior to you measuring it with your test kit. P.S. Just to be clear, Prime does not 'remove' ammonia, but binds to it to make it non-toxic to your live stock. But you can still measure that ammonia with your test kit. So if you are measuring 0.25ppm that never goes higher, you should not worry about having to dose Prime.

You don't need to leave your lights off either. Lights (well, specific spectrums of light) inhibit nitrification: https://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v141/p183-192/, but does not kill them. The nitrifiers we want to grow, we would want to grow in the dark habitats in the aquarium anyways (i.e. in the rocks, in the sand, etc.) which would not be affected really, whether the light is on or off.

The argument that 'but we want nitrifiers to grow everywhere, including where light may shine later' does not make sense, as well, once you start turning the light on, then all those nitrifiers would have their nitrification activity would be inhibited anyways, so that's moot.

 

[brandon429]

prime will now cause false .25 reading agreed was not needed

api does this reaction in many in-tank works, cleanings etc.

Hey can you post pics of this reef, we need it for a thread on skip cycle live rocks able to instantly carry bioload. we collect pics of that kind of LFS skip cycle work.