Ammonia in INSTANT OCEAN REEF CRYSTALS

[allsite]

First off, I'll just say I'm one sad fish dad. One by one my fish and corals are dying. It's my first reef and my 5 fish were buddies for 2 years. Not a single death until this week.

INSTANT OCEAN REEF CRYSTALS crashed my reef with ammonia. I didn't believe it at first but the tests feel conclusive.

The picture with 2 tubes:
Left: RODI+salt mix (from a pitcher of water with a drop of AmmoLock)
Right: RODI+salt mix

The picture with 1 tube:
Just RODI

Is it in my bucket? Nope, I tested it with a clean pitcher, exact same result. Nothing else touches the water prior to testing.

I have 2 boxes of mix that were ordered several months apart. One brand new, the other about 4 months old. They BOTH produced the same result (as seen in the pic).

All of the tests were done to water that was tank-ready, salinity and temp on par. I'm happy I didn't dump it into the tank but that also mean I'm just letting it die until I get new salt first thing tomorrow. I really hope AmmoLock and bacteria additives can save what little is left (1 clown and a few frags).

My tank is currently testing better than the right tube and worse than the left (forgot to take a photo but it's somewhat irrelevant in this thread).

My question is, how is it possible INSTANT OCEAN REEF CRYSTALS could produce 0.7ppm ammonia seawater? They're just selling poison? Is that not the point when doing a water change, to remove bad stuff while introducing good stuff?

It was traumatic to watch it crash after enjoying it to the max, stuck in a small apartment downtown during a pandemic. However I realize other reefers have incurred much bigger losses and my heart goes out to anyone who has to go through it.

 

[bruno3047]

In 2007 I had a 60 gallon mixed-reef and a 20 gallon QT. I bought a copperband and put it in the QT. Everything was going well. After the first week, I decided to do a 50% water change in the QT as I was overfeeding the copperband to fatten him up. So I thought I’d do a large water change as a precautionary measure. I went to the local Walmart to buy Culligan RO water in 5 gallon buckets. I had just moved to Florida and this was how I got my water. The next day my copperband was dead and the ammonia in my QT was off the charts. I suspected the RO water so I took my test kit to the local Walmart, put a little water in the bucket and tested it. The ammonia levels were ridiculously high. I told the store manager then went home and promptly bought an RO filter.