Ammonia and new fish

[PatricioLG]

Hello my name is Patrick, I have been running my Marine aquarium ‘Aqua One Reef Sys 180 for approximately 11 weeks, I have used Nitrifying bacteria 4 times from different companies and also transferred media from the main to the 25 Litre Quarantine tank, I am desperate to buy my little clowns now but the Ammonia for about 4 weeks or more has been between 0.09 to now 0.06 using a Hanna HI971 multimeter and Nitrites are 0.1

 

[Baldyreef]

Hello my name is Patrick, I have been running my Marine aquarium ‘Aqua One Reef Sys 180 for approximately 11 weeks, I have used Nitrifying bacteria 4 times from different companies and also transferred media from the main to the 25 Litre Quarantine tank, I am desperate to buy my little clowns now but the Ammonia for about 4 weeks or more has been between 0.09 to now 0.06 using a Hanna HI971 multimeter and Nitrites are 0.1

welcome to reef2reef! Do you have another established tank you can hold the clowns in? the bigger the tank the longer the cycle typically, buy your parameters it seems your almost done

 

[Privateye]

Welcome!

I wouldn't worry about those parameters. Especially for clownfish. The nitrite will have almost no toxicity for fish in a marine environment, and the ammonia level is safe.

 

[PatricioLG]

welcome to reef2reef! Do you have another established tank you can hold the clowns in? the bigger the tank the longer the cycle typically, buy your parameters it seems your almost done

No just the main tank and quarantine tank, obviously I’m going to quarantine new clowns, problem is both tanks have been reading low for ages and don’t seem to be zeroing out

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I agree there is zero concern with those values. It takes more than 10 ppm ammonia to kill fish, and hundreds of ppm of nitrite. :)

 

[PatricioLG]

Welcome!

I wouldn't worry about those parameters. Especially for clownfish. The nitrite will have almost no toxicity for fish in a marine environment, and the ammonia level is safe.

Thank you, I know it’s low but have been worrying so much because it’s not dropping to zero

 

[BryanM]

Have you checked your cycle by dosing some sort of ammonia product? Basically you want to dose to get a reading of around 2.0, wait 24 hours, test again, and it should be zero/near zero.

If it is, your cycle is complete.

My test kits always registered low levels of ammonia and nitrite, I think there's a good reason for this but I forget what that is, but I was told to ignore it, I was good to go.

 

[PatricioLG]

Have you checked your cycle by dosing some sort of ammonia product? Basically you want to dose to get a reading of around 2.0, wait 24 hours, test again, and it should be zero/near zero.

If it is, your cycle is complete.

My test kits always registered low levels of ammonia and nitrite, I think there's a good reason for this but I forget what that is, but I was told to ignore it, I was good to go.

Yes I have been ghost feeding it for some time and doing water changes on both, although I have corals in the main and invertebrates doing well

 

[PatricioLG]

Welcome!

I wouldn't worry about those parameters. Especially for clownfish. The nitrite will have almost no toxicity for fish in a marine environment, and the ammonia level is safe.

Thank you it’s not like I’m new, I have had marine tanks in the past and have always kept freshwater too for 52 years but never had a problem with cycling to 0.0 although after reading all the positive things about the Hanna tests that’s why I invested in it.

 

[Baldyreef]

welcome to reef2reef! Do you have another established tank you can hold the clowns in? the bigger the tank the longer the cycle typically, buy your parameters it seems your almost done

No just the main tank and quarantine tank, obviously I’m going to quarantine new clowns, problem is both tanks have been reading low for ages and don’t seem to be zeroing out

They should eventually and like the others said the clowns will be fine, some people even add them before a tank is cycled

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Thank you it’s not like I’m new, I have had marine tanks in the past and have always kept freshwater too for 52 years but never had a problem with cycling to 0.0 although after reading all the positive things about the Hanna tests that’s why I invested in it.

Some things are different in seawater, and nitrite tox (and lack thereof) is an extreme example of that.

 

[KrisReef]

Hmm.
Maybe test the freshly mixed seawater for ammonia.

I think I remember that it can also test positive for ammonia.

The extremely low levels may represent the biproducts of microbial consumption of the "ghost" foods? The corals in your tank will be happy with ammonia present in the water. They eat it for lunch whenever it's available.

And with Hanna meters, they have a tolerance range and at very low levels of resultants they could easily be reporting test noise and not actual ammonia?