Ammonia in my fishless QT. Why?

[brandon429]

One thing my false ammonia alert thread above establishes is the groupthink intial acceptance in forums of any stated ammonia level in a reef as factual. Even when not in a quarantine

Look what the crowd always does—> your bac are dead, dying, starved etc. always a bac issue, that’s the pattern.

we are working against a gradient where no stated level is denied or fact checked by habit of the masses and by training from the retail overlords / bottle bac sales machine

Omission of TAN factored reported levels runs 99% of any ammonia alert thread, pics are found of the tests in each link and they’re total ammonia vs nh3 reports, we expect reefs to produce ammonia to handle, its presence isn’t an alarm. It’s bad form in the reef tank would be the alarm.


read the example links, few in the posts agree with my assessments


yet to this day, message any aquarist / see if animals ever died, water ever clouded or smelled, total crashes etc

only the api or the Red Sea did all of that damage and reactive bottle bac sales.

 

[brandon429]

Any tank that has brown algae that grew in it is cycled for basic filtration bacteria, it’s been running either with pre cycled items or it’s been running long enough to have secondary and tertiary growth layers atop and aside filtration biofilm.


the sole question here is whether the collective surface area and plant fixation is in proportion to the bioload, it’s not a lack of bacteria or cycling issue, there’s brown algae as a bioindicator.

I feel that lots of jar reefs should be crashing if we deem this tank with new algae growth, open corals, clear water and ability to process added feed as a stall. Any reef that can’t control its free ammonia compounds and crashes, this tank above isn’t crashed it looks great


thats always how free ammonia posts manifest- only a test reading as the alert.

if you literally move all the contents of this qt tank into a pickle jar, you have every reef arrangement running here below. Before the move to the jar, it’s these setups only with ten times the dilution. They feed reef roids into the jar containers:

Pico Reef Journals

Reef Aquariums 5 Gallons and Smaller

www.nano-reef.com

that’s my case on why I think this QT doesn’t have free ammonia issues. It’s not a rockless day 1 setup having no surface area at all with a fish bioload showing .1 nh3 on seneye and clear losses in place with unhappy corals.

also in pattern: this is the fifteen thousandth time a web post ammonia test and the umpires reverse what the ammonia line on a cycling chart does (drop down on day ten, stay there)

**********credit to the OP***********
you doubted the test kit with your intuition. you knew the system hadn’t been worked enough to justify the reading.

 

[QuinnLee512]

I really appreciate everyone taking the time to comment. While I now understand that I need to cycle the tank, which I thought using cycled water and dry rock for it to bind to, would be sufficient for what I thought would be a very low bio-load tank, the question was still where is this ammonia coming from? It really didn't make sense to me because my corals look happy as can be. My goniopora really extends, all the heads on my duncan are open, my mushrooms are open. I'm only dealing with a hammer that was most likely stung. I have not fed any reef roids since doing the multiple water changes so I took that equation out of the picture. The seachem alert badge just wasn't yellow or whatever that color on the very bottom is so I did a test using API. I use API just to tell me whether there's actually ammonia or not. I don't rely on it for exact numbers and that also said that I have ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. I used a hanna tester to test for phosphate and that reading was above what the tester could read ( ie above .9). At this point, I think I will just dose prime until I have enough bac to take care of the issue.

 

[Garf]

I really appreciate everyone taking the time to comment. While I now understand that I need to cycle the tank, which I thought using cycled water and dry rock for it to bind to, would be sufficient for what I thought would be a very low bio-load tank, the question was still where is this ammonia coming from? It really didn't make sense to me because my corals look happy as can be. My goniopora really extends, all the heads on my duncan are open, my mushrooms are open. I'm only dealing with a hammer that was most likely stung. I have not fed any reef roids since doing the multiple water changes so I took that equation out of the picture. The seachem alert badge just wasn't yellow or whatever that color on the very bottom is so I did a test using API. I use API just to tell me whether there's actually ammonia or not. I don't rely on it for exact numbers and that also said that I have ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. I used a hanna tester to test for phosphate and that reading was above what the tester could read ( ie above .9). At this point, I think I will just dose prime until I have enough bac to take care of the issue.

Unless you’ve used tap water to make the salty stuff up, a high phosphate reading like that would correlate to something dying off, hence the ammonia. I don’t think a low dose of even reefroids would spike it like that.

 

[Quietman]

I believe that corals aren't as susceptible to low ammonia levels as fish. That's based on tanks I've seen with coral added initially during cycle. I haven't tried myself although I am curious. I think I read that your corals are fine so likely all is well. I don't think I'd dose anything. Just be patient and do some water changes for nitrates.

 

[Garf]

Low ammonia levels are somewhat natural anyway, I don’t think there’s any need to panic as long as they are not rapidly rising. Theres also a thread on here that implies Prime doesn’t detoxify ammonia, with evidence it seems.

 

[brandon429]

A neat way to see this thread is the hobby is still in the development phase when it comes to free ammonia testing. All the push and pull for different takes on the matter becomes part of a searchable database of pics and outcomes after stated params, the gold is in the patterns it doesn’t mean we have to reach consensus in one thread challenge.

can you change lighting to white so we can see clearer details, these pics and feedback are helping. You have a neat bacteria assessment thread challenge. It’s handy to have both testers, the badge reading the critical nh3 / dangerous form levels and api reading the total ammonia which we expect to read ten times higher than what the badge reads, it requires tan conversion to indicate nh3 and even then it’s still a tenth too high based on any tuned seneye would read on the same sample. We always expect there to be some degree of trace nh3 and total ammonia in a fed and processing biosystem

seneye says nh3 runs in the mid-thousandths ppm once cycled, api commonly reads .25 on these tanks, we collect the example pics of the test in our ammonia focus thread prior page.


let’s see white detailed pics very curious


its true that adding used tank water carries bacteria quickly just like bottle bac does, we have a thread where a totally dry tank was brought up to full cycle solely by water from another reef. From poster Tuffloud

his thread shattered the notion about reef tank water not containing cycling bac…it sure does. These are high shear systems that carry floc in suspension, ie filtration bacteria rafts.

 

[QuinnLee512]

Here are pics under white light. Side question, does that Duncan look like it's bleached by the light? My Goniopora really reaches for the light so I assume that my light intensity isn't too strong. It boggles my mind how different the colors are under white and blue lighting.

 

[Garf]

Here are pics under white light. Side question, does that Duncan look like it's bleached by the light? My Goniopora really reaches for the light so I assume that my light intensity isn't too strong. It boggles my mind how different the colors are under white and blue lighting.

Ammonia badge readings are ok.

Edit - you need to read the ammonia badge with white lights.

 

[brandon429]

That’s literally every pico reefs scaled out ratio that’s amazing to see


with those clear pics a powerful case is made for ammonia control. Your pico reef is merely laid out on a plastic grid in a huge system, mines packed into a beta vase. The tendency is to see the words Quarantine Tank and immediately short change bacteria, but as details unfold you have everyone’s pico reef it’s not a quarantine tank until it’s being blasted with meds one day lol


the biofilms on the walls of the tank absolutely count as an ammonia sponge even though flat glass isnt much surface area, plants and moneran mats don’t require large biomass to uptake considerable ammonia and this is a fallow system, low test loading. I predict it’ll carry a clownfish or a goby right now and still pass seneye proofing not higher than low hundredths ppm

sponge filter on the intake, a high throughput zone, sure could carry some degree of bioload all by itself. pic details amount to ammonia control vs noncontrol, well enough to be included in the example thread prior

 

[QuinnLee512]

Ammonia badge readings are ok.

Yes better today. It was closer to the color on the left yesterday.

 

[Garf]

Yes better today. It was closer to the color on the left yesterday.

Is your heater on a controller, or just the internal thermostat?

 

[lapin]

I have not fed any reef roids since doing the multiple water changes

I used DT water to fill up most of the water in the QT

I have a sponge finger and a hang on filter that hangs on the inside.

If you are wondering where the nutrients came from?
This could splain it

 

[QuinnLee512]

If you are wondering where the nutrients came from?
This could splain it

I'm not following. My DT has no livestock in it. It definitely doesn't have any ammonia. If anything I think I need to ghost feed it so that my bac doesn't die off. Both filters are brand new. I'm pretty sure the reef roids are mostly gone from 3 50% water changes?

 

[QuinnLee512]

Is your heater on a controller, or just the internal thermostat?

Internal. I look at my thermometer quite often.

 

[Dan_P]

I've added Dr Tim's one and only. I have the dry rock for the bacteria and will add some marine pure blocks. Okay you've answered my question around where the ammonia is coming from. I didn't realize that corals poop.

Use Bio-Spira. The ammonia will be gone in a day or two. One snd Only in my hands is much slower.

 

[Dan_P]

I really appreciate everyone taking the time to comment. While I now understand that I need to cycle the tank, which I thought using cycled water and dry rock for it to bind to, would be sufficient for what I thought would be a very low bio-load tank, the question was still where is this ammonia coming from? It really didn't make sense to me because my corals look happy as can be. My goniopora really extends, all the heads on my duncan are open, my mushrooms are open. I'm only dealing with a hammer that was most likely stung. I have not fed any reef roids since doing the multiple water changes so I took that equation out of the picture. The seachem alert badge just wasn't yellow or whatever that color on the very bottom is so I did a test using API. I use API just to tell me whether there's actually ammonia or not. I don't rely on it for exact numbers and that also said that I have ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. I used a hanna tester to test for phosphate and that reading was above what the tester could read ( ie above .9). At this point, I think I will just dose prime until I have enough bac to take care of the issue.

Prime is useless. Dose Bio-Spira or Fritz Turbo.

By the way, if the pH in this new system is below 8, the amount of free ammonia might not be at a toxic level.

 

[lapin]

Since this thread is still alive, inquiring minds want to know how long it takes for "Life Rock bacteria" to start coverting Nitrite to Nitrate.
Maybe this can help the OP

I read 3 days some where a long time ago