Accidental ammonia spike, ran out of salt

[Alpha_and_Gec]

I was just introducing some new corals to my reef when I accidentally nudged open my skimmer outlet, dumping some amount of waste water into my tank. The ammonia levels shot up to 0.50ppm, but I ran out of salt whilst preparing for a water change. It's midnight right now, I'll have to wait at least 8 hours until my LFS opens for more salt. What should I do?

 

[Alpha_and_Gec]

Currently preparing water with what salt I have left, not sure if it's going to do anything with this small a quantity but I don't have anything else that could help.

 

[Adamc13o3]

Skimmers overflow all the time. I wouldn’t worry that much.

 

[sc50964]

Is it an established or new tank?

 

[Alpha_and_Gec]

Skimmers overflow all the time. I wouldn’t worry that much.

Just added new coral though, I don't want to overwhelm and kill them. One of them is a pair of golden hammers I got for the price of a normal one.

 

[Alpha_and_Gec]

Is it an established or new tank?

Established, but currently basically empty.

 

[sc50964]

Established, but currently basically empty.

If it’s empty how could it have so much excessive nutrients to raise the reading from 0 to 0.5ppm? I don’t get it. Can you show a pic of the tank?

 

[Alpha_and_Gec]

If it’s empty how could it have so much excessive nutrients to raise the reading from 0 to 0.5ppm? I don’t get it. Can you show a pic of the tank?

It’s literally midnight so my lights are all off, but I have essentially no stock other than the 4 anemones prior to the corals that were added today. The tank had not been fed in almost a year but the skimmer had also been running without being emptied for roughly a month(it’s hardly even a quarter full)

I think that hammer in the middle is going to die…

 

[sc50964]

It’s literally midnight so my lights are all off, but I have essentially no stock other than the 4 anemones prior to the corals that were added today. The tank had not been fed in almost a year but the skimmer had also been running without being emptied for roughly a month(it’s hardly even a quarter full)

I think that hammer in the middle is going to die…

I see. Do you also have the 0.5ppm ammonia testing result handy?

 

[Alpha_and_Gec]

I see. Do you also have the 0.5ppm ammonia testing result handy?

I actually just dumped it for a retest, seems like the levels aren’t rising at least.

 

[sc50964]

I actually just dumped it for a retest, seems like the levels aren’t rising at least.

I think it’s fine. Read the following thread unless you have something dying in there.

API Ammonia Test Kit

Ive seen a lot of posts saying that the api ammonia test kits are inaccurate and shouldn't be trusted... Is there any scientific research proving that api is marketing a faulty kit? Is it possible that one aquarist got a hold of a bad kit and now everyone is going around repeating one persons...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Alpha_and_Gec]

I think it’s fine. Read the following thread unless you have something dying in there.

API Ammonia Test Kit

Ive seen a lot of posts saying that the api ammonia test kits are inaccurate and shouldn't be trusted... Is there any scientific research proving that api is marketing a faulty kit? Is it possible that one aquarist got a hold of a bad kit and now everyone is going around repeating one persons...

www.reef2reef.com

yeah I'm just using api because ammonia is the one test that I don't have from elsewhere... haven't been necessary for years. I didn't even realize it's supposed to be green until I finished the test. My hammers do seem to be dying though... shrunk all the way back into their skeletons, and my nems are visibly wilting. At least it's not hitting my new zoas.

 

[Alpha_and_Gec]

yeah my nems seeems to have all balled up, going to check back in the morning to see what happens. I know corals can eat this stuff(ammonia and its products), but it's mainly the parameter shock I'm afraid of. They're coming into an environment that already has different light, salinity, and nutrient levels, having it change again within the hour can't be healthy.

 

[taricha]

Skimmers overflow all the time. I wouldn’t worry that much.

This is correct, and how I'd think about it as well.

Additionally, the 0.50ppm result on the ammonia kit from a one time incident is of no concern. It'll drop as those nutrients get processed (and re-skimmed).
whether your new hammers make it or not is not going to be determined by this one accidental spill of a little skimmate.

 

[exnisstech]

I don't see how spilling some skimmate is going to cause an ammonia spike. I've spilled it before and even emptied the cup back into the tank if it skimmed too wet for my liking. But I don't own an ammonia test kit so maybe I'm doing bad and just don't know it but I don't think so.

 

[Dom]

If the tank is new, it isn't established.

Also, an overflowing skimmer cup is not the cause of your ammonia spike.

 

[Dan_P]

I was just introducing some new corals to my reef when I accidentally nudged open my skimmer outlet, dumping some amount of waste water into my tank. The ammonia levels shot up to 0.50ppm, but I ran out of salt whilst preparing for a water change. It's midnight right now, I'll have to wait at least 8 hours until my LFS opens for more salt. What should I do?

0.5 ppm total ammonia does not represent much toxic free ammonia, maybe 0.05 ppm. That might be irritating to fish gills. If you have an established aquarium, the ammonia should be gone in 24 hours or less. If the skimmate was particularly dark, the waste not the ammonia might be irritating the coral. This is probably a non-event. Coral loss would be attributed to something else.

 

[brandon429]

why was the tank unfed for a year

 

[taricha]

I don't see how spilling some skimmate is going to cause an ammonia spike. I've spilled it before and even emptied the cup back into the tank if it skimmed too wet for my liking.

A skimmer collects protein and some other organics. In the skimmer cup, this can break down to ammonia over time. So if I test my fresh skimate, the ammonia reading is very low. But if I leave it in the skimmer for a couple of days, the ammonia level goes higher.

 

[brandon429]

This still falls under the advice of updated cycling science that no post cycle display reef needs tested for ammonia. The advice comes from the swath of digital testers who input much larger degrees of liquid ammonium chloride into their reefs on purpose as daily feeding and then can see without misreads the system handles ammonia in fifteen minutes. The key is owning a calibrated digital kit (shows a baseline reading before the event) vs this particular kit in the picture, the most searchable misreading test kit in literally all of reefing.

Common procedural errors in reefing are handled without harm, and uncommon errors don’t require a cheap test kit to know they’ve occurred, so testing can’t help it can only cause false ammonia alert threads. Notice we don’t have a baseline ammonia pic before the alert: that reading above is what fully normal reef tanks run at on api, if we search. That reading above has triggered about four million false stall cycled readings, and now it’s 4 million and one

withholding feed for a year was the alert

Any organics moved about the tank, including scooting a rock from one side to the other, can and does cause that same color shade. It may or may not be actual ammonia that causes it, we don’t know, but moving a rock across the tank doesn’t release ammonia that’s for sure and we’ve got threads where a simple water change caused that reading (and the resulting false alarm post)

I agree concentrated skimmate can input some ammonia. It won’t be harmful it’ll be nutrients that tank is hungry for

literally any physical action inside a reef tank can trigger a darker api color, yet the pathways an actual ammonia spike occur in display reefing are very few.