Acceptable ammonia and phosphate level?

[mooputingtong]

What are acceptable level of ammonia and phosphate in mixed reef? With Salifert ammonia kit testing, I get a white cloudy water(not sure its zero or not) but it isnt yellow and my phosphate about 0.1 or little more? Im wondering if this is acceptable for mixed reef. All of my fish are mostly active but wont go crazy for flakes or mysis shrimp. It will take a bite wont chase or go crazy. My torch is also not opening fully and shows sign of receding tissue at bottom parts( got a freshly cut branch from LFS and did see little tissue parts after cutting). Im not sure whats causing this but it seems like all of my live stock are not 100% comfortable. Is this due to phosphate and ammonia issue?

Temperature 77.5
salinity 1.25
ph 8.3
nitrate 5-10
ammonia 0 or mabye little ammonia?
phosphate 0.1 or little more
alk 7.7
cal
mag

 

[brandon429]

You can’t have ammonia out of spec in a post cycle reef if you know your animals are not dead and rotting, it can never drift out of spec. You can rule it out of the two concerned params.


the answer as to how much ammonia your tank has is in the thousandths ppm nh3, the only form we care about. Your kit above is testing total ammonia, and it’s not calibrated for thousandths ppm nh3 so we wouldn’t expect it to read that. A reason to quit testing for ammonia in a post cycle reef is because you aren’t running seneye and because what free ammonia does is predictable with no measuring at all in every reef.

seneye merely gives the expected known turnover levels, or we stack it in the seneye misread collection lol. Ammonia does not ever, in any display reef, ever drift out of spec or hover just above danger, we don’t have to test for it. Ammonia is never at zero in a reef, it’s actively turned over by the second. Ammonia runs in the thousandths ppm given the typical surface area of a post cycled reef

if u want to see ammonia being converted live time, then it costs three hundred dollars to attain that in a tester.

 

[Spare time]

0 ammonia is acceptable. I doubt you have any.

As for phosphate, I typically see algae problems arise with people having tanks somewhere over 0.1, but much of this depends on the age of the tank.

 

[mooputingtong]

0 ammonia is acceptable. I doubt you have any.

As for phosphate, I typically see algae problems arise with people having tanks somewhere over 0.1, but much of this depends on the age of the tank.

i barely see any algae in my tank. i kept my nitrate mostly less than 10.

 

[mooputingtong]

You can’t have ammonia out of spec in a post cycle reef if you know your animals are not dead and rotting, it can never drift out of spec. You can rule it out of the two concerned params.


the answer as to how much ammonia your tank has is in the thousandths ppm nh3, the only form we care about. Your kit above is testing total ammonia, and it’s not calibrated for thousandths ppm nh3 so we wouldn’t expect it to read that. A reason to quit testing for ammonia in a post cycle reef is because you aren’t running seneye and because what free ammonia does is predictable with no measuring at all in every reef.

seneye merely gives the expected known turnover levels, or we stack it in the seneye misread collection lol. Ammonia does not ever, in any display reef, ever drift out of spec or hover just above danger, we don’t have to test for it. Ammonia is never at zero in a reef, it’s actively turned over by the second. Ammonia runs in the thousandths ppm given the typical surface area of a post cycled reef

if u want to see ammonia being converted live time, then it costs three hundred dollars to attain that in a tester.

Im not spending few hundred dollars for very accurate testing lol. So even with salifert showing zero ammonia, Theres still ammonia in tank but not detectable.

 

[brandon429]

Yes agreed, that’s saliferts best attempt at reading your total ammonia nitrogen I think they call it, but the nh3 factor is what kills and after cycling, no reef ever loses control of nh3 unless a major event kills your whole tank all at once. A dead animal or a single dead fish in the tank won’t spike it, that’s why we all endure inside tank losses and the greater system prevails.


in our many tracked seneye threads, a completely rotting tang wedged in rocks didn’t move up nh3 levels on a working seneye machine. I’m sure in a tiny nano it might, but in common large tank dilutions nh3 simply self manages as long as the tank is kept wet, after the cycle. We have been told by Dr Tim in some posts that resident filter bac simply step up to handle more bioload spikes, then when oxidized they resume a normalized functional rate to match common daily bioload.

the specific way you know your ammonia is safe is that your fish are alive, they can’t be irritated by having nh3 out of spec, it can’t drift out of spec. When nh3 does spike due to an aberration, they’ll all die and I cannot recall that ever occurring in any reef we’ve tracked post cycle. Literally all display tanks from quarter gallon picos to the 17 thousand gallon largest reef on this forum run .00x active nh3 readings, post cycle.

 

[Fish_Sticks]

For ammonia, we look for zero... in a cycled aquarium it is usually used as soon as it is produced by the rock dwelling bacteria, algea, and even some corals.

Test kits usually are hard to read.... but if your water is cloudy, it sounds like either your tank was not cycled, or you dont have enough live rock to house enough bacteria for how much you are feeding.

 

[brandon429]

He’s meaning the test kit read is cloudy

 

[mooputingtong]

For ammonia, we look for zero... in a cycled aquarium it is usually used as soon as it is produced by the rock dwelling bacteria, algea, and even some corals.

Test kits usually are hard to read.... but if your water is cloudy, it sounds like either your tank was not cycled, or you dont have enough live rock to house enough bacteria for how much you are feeding.

My water isnt cloudy the salifert ammonia kits water is cloudy

For ammonia, we look for zero... in a cycled aquarium it is usually used as soon as it is produced by the rock dwelling bacteria, algea, and even some corals.

Test kits usually are hard to read.... but if your water is cloudy, it sounds like either your tank was not cycled, or you dont have enough live rock to house enough bacteria for how much you are feeding.

My salifert kit reads is white cloudy water. My tanks water is crystal clear! I used ammonia method for cycling so im pretty confident is well cycled.

 

[clxtchsxns]

My water isnt cloudy the salifert ammonia kits water is cloudy

My salifert kit reads is white cloudy water. My tanks water is crystal clear! I used ammonia method for cycling so im pretty confident is well cycled.

I’m sure you’ve figured it out by now but if it’s a white cloudy I have the same thing on my salifert nh3 + nh4 when there is almost no ammonia it’s cloudy white but I’m not entirely sure but best of luck man.