Ammonia Off the Charts

[MnFish1]

In this example, Brandon is right. Even to my eye, that tank is healthy and thriving. NO tank, with prolonged ammonia exposure as the OP claimed, would EVER look that good. In this example, in my opinion, a picture IS worth a thousand words.

Isn't your own experiment proving that it just isn't possible to have ammonia levels sustained at that level? @Coxey81 showed pretty clearly that ammonia levels, even VERY high levels, when exposed to nitrifying bacteria, decline in a reasonable amount of time. Any tank that has been up and running for long enough to develop nitrifying bacteria, will do exactly that.

Another point that seems relevant here. There has never been a mention of what nitrate levels are. Whatever eats, poops! For ammonia levels to be that high for that long would by default show nitrate levels off the charts or, at least extremely high if given a regular water change schedule, which of course also bring ammonia down as well.. Funny how it all fits together huh?

Yes I agree with Brandon - there cannot be a tank with 3 ppm ammonia and living thriving animals. I wasn't being clear. The disagreement I had with Brandon was why is he asking for 'examples of tanks with 3 ppm ammonia that are functioning perfectly'. Because - they are virtually non-existent. My secondary point was that just observing a tank ALONE cannot for sure say how much free ammonia is actually in the water - depending on pH and temp. I.e. - there are margins of error with every test. For example - a tank with a TRUE .25 ppm ammonia (total) reading may be functioning completely normal but on the way to a potential disaster. That is the problem IMHO - of making statements like - 'we can prove in every case that if the tank is fine the ammonia is a 'false read' - based on the observing the tank. 1) it could be a false read (test done wrong) or 2) it could be a true read but just below the 'alert/toxic levels' for the tank inhabitants - based on pH, and Temp

 

[brandon429]

Well, I showed that none are running above .1 ppm nh3 given the temps and pH variances found in reef tanks. We can certainly assign maximum levels based on pics, toxicity can reasonably be ruled out using them…agreed nobody can name the exact ppm lol agreed.


*I didn’t actually show anything in the matter… it’s the lack of single examples to show that some exist as outliers that does the speaking in my opinion. There are enough working seneyes now where we can tie in the ratios seen in pics among stocked tanks and known safety maximums for ammonia control. I have posts online claiming these same details years before seneye…matter of fact I know some forum bosses at major sites who deeply deeply disagreed that reef tanks can’t run at .25 ppm noncontrol levels. I wasn’t allowed to post on their site after making such bad claims, updated cycling science owes BrianD a hearty handshake thanks for the study motivation that’s for sure


they tried to squelch the pattern science, it still pushed through anyway that’s fun. Now with all the digital meters in place, back-checking old posts is also pretty fun. Reef2reef sure fosters lots of discovery work being such a free/ open market/ open study place that’s also for sure.

 

[MnFish1]

Well, I showed that none are running above .1 ppm nh3 given the temps and pH variances found in reef tanks. We can certainly assign maximum levels based on pics, toxicity can reasonably be ruled out using them…agreed nobody can name the exact ppm lol agreed.


*I didn’t actually show anything in the matter… it’s the lack of single examples to show that some exist as outliers that does the speaking in my opinion. There are enough working seneyes now where we can tie in the ratios seen in pics among stocked tanks and known safety maximums for ammonia control. I have posts online claiming these same details years before seneye…matter of fact I know some forum bosses at major sites who deeply deeply disagreed that reef tanks can’t run at .25 ppm noncontrol levels. I wasn’t allowed to post on their site after making such bad claims, updated cycling science owes BrianD a hearty handshake thanks for the study motivation that’s for sure


they tried to squelch the pattern science, it still pushed through anyway that’s fun. Now with all the digital meters in place, back-checking old posts is also pretty fun.

We have no disagreement. But - on many sites it says that 0.1 ppm NH3 is cause for concern. Seneye itself says that up to .02 ppm is 'safe'. >.02 to 05 is 'alert' - >.05 to.2 is 'alarm. There must. be a reason for these numbers - they are similar on multiple sites.

But I do have a question - what percentage of people with Reef tanks have a Seneye? My guess - a very small number (Its a guess)? Again my point is - yes absolutely 3 ppm ammonia will not support life if its a correct test. And I'm assuming that by your numbers above that the majority of tanks you're talking about were well below 0.1 ppm ammonia (as compared to many or most of them).

 

[brandon429]

The vast minority agreed are on seneye, it’s the least used device of all nh3 measures by a large margin but the working ratios tend to run highly similar tank to tank, it’s why we don’t need seneye on every tank to still predict its working averages. we all tend to be vastly overdone on surface area and not near full carry capacity in fish…this drives working nh3 levels to the thousandths I’ll bet, once we get ten times more digital feedback to verify.


had selected .1 just as an easy upper end maximum I knew none would hit, but I feel given more years of look back any calibrated system will show display reefs won’t break .009 until a fish kill happens.

.1 was orders beyond what I think a post cycle, high surface area directly in display runs at. i think they average .005 across tanks and even with variances like less than normal rocks, but not 4 total rocks am just saying even the negative aqua scape setups control their nh3 just fine given that obvious lesser surface area. I specifically do not think a negative aqua scape reef tank runs above ~.005 nh3 on average these reefs all trends towards whatever that zero line on an ammonia chart turns out to be


the only way we found in pattern to get consistent nh3 in the hundredths was to move the device into a quarantine, nearly all glass and hardly any surface area + fish and fish food.

 

[Dan_P]

No reason to doubt you - but I BELIEVE that the seneye reactors quickly to large changes in ammonia (high levels) - and then comes down more slowly. even if put back into water with no ammonia - much like the Seachem Alert

I will be getting this data soon for you guys. @MnFish1 what do consider as “high“ so that I can test that level?

Seachem Alert not only has a slow recovery time, it does not completely recover. This results in a baseline creep which eventualy results in the original yellowish film color becoming bluish. The film still works but 0 ppm becomes blue.

 

[MnFish1]

I will be getting this data soon for you guys. @MnFish1 what do consider as “high“ so that I can test that level?

Seachem Alert not only has a slow recovery time, it does not completely recover. This results in a baseline creep which eventualy results in the original yellowish film color becoming bluish. The film still works but 0 ppm becomes blue.

I would call seneye - and ask them. I've already posted it - I'm not going to go through it again. The yellow definitely goes back to completely yellow - I will be posting pictures tonight - but this has been I think 5 4 ppm to 0 ppm changes - you might be correct.

 

[MnFish1]

I would call seneye - and ask them. I've already posted it - I'm not going to go through it again. The yellow definitely goes back to completely yellow - I will be posting pictures tonight - but this has been I think 5 4 ppm to 0 ppm changes - you might be correct.

In other words - I have had multiple Seachem alerts that have read - ALERT - back to zero. I know your experiment with 8 ppm ammonia - and 8.6 ph - would not work with Seachem (according to what I recall) - I woudl suggest contacting them - and asking them their parameters

 

[MnFish1]

I will be getting this data soon for you guys. @MnFish1 what do consider as “high“ so that I can test that level?

Seachem Alert not only has a slow recovery time, it does not completely recover. This results in a baseline creep which eventualy results in the original yellowish film color becoming bluish. The film still works but 0 ppm becomes blue.

I have no 'high consideration' - I would suggest using the levels suggested by the manufacturer - as I already said

 

[brandon429]

so to recap, to have in line for future retro measurement my stance of the last fifteen years regarding ammonia alert posts across forums:

Not in any case was the alert real. Not in any case was the alert backed by digital calibrated measure, not one outlier as mentioned. if fish died, they died before ammonia spiked initially. only fish death left in the tank or meds dosed will cause a current typical reef tank to lose ammonia control. outside of that, all ammonia alert posts are to instantly be regarded as false reads, since thats 100% of available examples. Knowledge of test brand specifics allowed you guys to quickly determine the reason for the misread here.

Reef tanks trend towards control vs noncontrol of free ammonia and the working range tbd is currently viewed as thousandths ppm because that's the only digital meter we have in the hobby and nothing is available to benchmark it yet. Only old cycling science, the scary kind that coincidentally sells lots of repeat bottle bac to buyers to address a fearful condition I claim does not exist, ever allows for outliers in ammonia control after cycling. Updated cycling science does not teach fear and constant worry, we dont need to run ammonia tests after cycling and we never needed nitrite data in any phase. in every collected example I approached the matter of ammonia noncontrol as a misread, pics didn't fail to corroborate in my opinion.


Every single entrant in my collection thread is in the thousandths ppm, right at the time they're posting an nh4 reading appearing to be teetering on doom at 2+ ppm.

-it is 100% possible to diagnose ammonia issues from tank pics given a few biomarkers and timelines in place. a major contributor in the diagnostics is the lack of any linkable outliers. Mis reporting of actual ammonia measures is so common in the hobby, tank pictures are now far more reliable than someones interpretation from a non digital test kit. when biomarkers aren't in place, newly cycled dry rock systems often lack them, the # of days the tank has had water and boosters in it becomes more reliable in control assessment than someone's interpretation of a non digital ammonia testing.

I have never seen one reef tank ever, ever fail to control its ammonia, ergo every ammonia alert post is a false alarm since the title 100% involves a test reading interp vs an observable tank condition.

any reef lacking surface area controls to run its bioload will have compounding ammonia issues from cumulative waste + bioloading and will die soon, it can't live for months.

-until we get accurate ammonia studies using densely stocked fish only setups we won't know the full dynamics of surface area/ ammonia control in reefing and are left to make forecasts only about what happens in the setups that truly exceed stocking densities we see in reefs.

If a heavily stocked fish only setup using live rock and some type of common external filter + surface area arrangement consistently runs at .05 ppm I will be flatly amazed, I predict those too run in the upper thousandths. once the normal safety zone of a marine aquarium is breached by too heavy bioload, a quick tipping point occurs. when this happens in quarantine tanks they do a water change, or dose prime, or dose bottle bac, a reaction is needed or the fish will die and the water will begin to turn gray. Fish only setups don't have a way to slightly exceed safe nh3 constants that any common reef tank will show, or they'll tip into doom, that's my prediction for when the time comes we have ways to look back and measure the dynamics at hand.

I predict both reef tanks and heavily stocked fish only tanks using reef rock in the display run in the thousandths.

**heavily stocked systems that dont use rock in the display, but sequester the surface area in sumps or in filters that receive overflow from the main display may very well carry higher nh3 level than normal since there isn't immediate waste contact to the working surfaces inside the display. If there's rocks inside a display to any normal degree, i think this triggers the .00x constant we find on so many hundreds of uploaded seneye logs tank to tank.

 

[MnFish1]

so to recap, to have in line for future retro measurement my stance of the last fifteen years regarding ammonia alert posts across forums:

Not in any case was the alert real. Not in any case was the alert backed by digital calibrated measure, not one outlier as mentioned. if fish died, they died before ammonia spiked initially. only fish death left in the tank or meds dosed will cause a current typical reef tank to lose ammonia control. outside of that, all ammonia alert posts are to instantly be regarded as false reads, since thats 100% of available examples. Knowledge of test brand specifics allowed you guys to quickly determine the reason for the misread here.

Reef tanks trend towards control vs noncontrol of free ammonia and the working range tbd is currently viewed as thousandths ppm because that's the only digital meter we have in the hobby and nothing is available to benchmark it yet. Only old cycling science, the scary kind that coincidentally sells lots of repeat bottle bac to buyers to address a fearful condition I claim does not exist, ever allows for outliers in ammonia control after cycling. Updated cycling science does not teach fear and constant worry, we dont need to run ammonia tests after cycling and we never needed nitrite data in any phase. in every collected example I approached the matter of ammonia noncontrol as a misread, pics didn't fail to corroborate in my opinion.


Every single entrant in my collection thread is in the thousandths ppm, right at the time they're posting an nh4 reading appearing to be teetering on doom at 2+ ppm.

-it is 100% possible to diagnose ammonia issues from tank pics given a few biomarkers and timelines in place. a major contributor in the diagnostics is the lack of any linkable outliers. Mis reporting of actual ammonia measures is so common in the hobby, tank pictures are now far more reliable than someones interpretation from a non digital test kit. when biomarkers aren't in place, newly cycled dry rock systems often lack them, the # of days the tank has had water and boosters in it becomes more reliable in control assessment than someone's interpretation of a non digital ammonia testing.

I have never seen one reef tank ever, ever fail to control its ammonia, ergo every ammonia alert post is a false alarm since the title 100% involves a test reading interp vs an observable tank condition.

any reef lacking surface area controls to run its bioload will have compounding ammonia issues from cumulative waste + bioloading and will die soon, it can't live for months.

-until we get accurate ammonia studies using densely stocked fish only setups we won't know the full dynamics of surface area/ ammonia control in reefing and are left to make forecasts only about what happens in the setups that truly exceed stocking densities we see in reefs.

If a heavily stocked fish only setup using live rock and some type of common external filter + surface area arrangement consistently runs at .05 ppm I will be flatly amazed, I predict those too run in the upper thousandths. once the normal safety zone of a marine aquarium is breached by too heavy bioload, a quick tipping point occurs. when this happens in quarantine tanks they do a water change, or dose prime, or dose bottle bac, a reaction is needed or the fish will die and the water will begin to turn gray. Fish only setups don't have a way to slightly exceed safe nh3 constants that any common reef tank will show, or they'll tip into doom, that's my prediction for when the time comes we have ways to look back and measure the dynamics at hand.

I predict both reef tanks and heavily stocked fish only tanks using reef rock in the display run in the thousandths.

**heavily stocked systems that dont use rock in the display, but sequester the surface area in sumps or in filters that receive overflow from the main display may very well carry higher nh3 level than normal since there isn't immediate waste contact to the working surfaces inside the display. If there's rocks inside a display to any normal degree, i think this triggers the .00x constant we find on so many hundreds of uploaded seneye logs tank to tank.

IMHO- you don't need to use 'real fish'. But - this is going to be a difficult one. Because very few people are going to want to just start dumping fish - or whatever into a tank. or ammonia for that matter.

1. The amount of rock I used in the experiments I did is identical to the rock /water ratio in the tank you sited.
2. It is very easy to do - an experiment - no matter what test you do - without fish. You just calculate the amount of bioload your putting in - in the form of food (The fish themselves do not produce 'much' ammonia - without food (at least food is the major input) - in any case there are formulas.
3. For example - in my upcoming experiment - it was planned to do exactly what you suggested - rather than adding 2 ppm - or whatever, add small amounts daily and see if there are any ammonia changes (using the Seachem alert badge) - so that its sure that you're looking at 'free ammonia'.

What would you think of this - once the rocks in my experiments are processing 2 ppm ammonia/day

Will add lets say .25 ppm ammonia and monitor hourly the Seachem alert. then - next day .5 ppm then the next day 1 ppm. monitoring IF/when the ammonia alert starts to 'change' from safe to alert. ?

 

[MnFish1]

@Dan_P - my Seachem alert has shown no evidence of 'creep' - despite several additions of ammonia - I do agree with you the change 'up' is much more rapid than the change 'down'