Ammonia Pegged at 8.0 After 50% Water Change, Nitrate 10ppm, What's is happening!

[bstone026]

I personally wouldn’t lower the salt anymore. I’d actually raise it if anything. Remember, we are trying to limit future die off to prevent any more ammonia spiking.

Question, did you add the bottle of bacteria yet?

No on top of everything else my amazon/UPS order got delayed a day. If I can keep this tank together til tommorow I will be so relieved, You know whats really funny the heathest fish in the tank right now is my lemon peel Angelfish and my coral beauty.

 

[bstone026]

the other tank that I swapped water with has an ammonia reading of 0.25ppm right now how can that be when i just dumped a ton of 8.0ppm in there. Probably because there are no fish in it at the moment and thus no pollutants. Dang I might swap some more water from the 0.25ppm tank lol

 

[brandon429]

Analyzing Hanna Ammonia checker Hi784, chemistry and performance

Hanna's saltwater ammonia checker, Hi784 is out and I wanted to take a look and assess its performance for reef tank water, and see where some interpretation of results might be helpful. This post will include some data on a display tank processing ammonia, and in a later post I'll do a...

www.reef2reef.com

Brians tank is claiming to run opposite to those findings

How would we classify Tarichas way of measuring vs this thread? Which method is more likely true, which findings on ammonia command are most likely true given these two threads to compare? Did ammonia stall in his running tank

It's important for readers to see that in a false stall thread, any proof to the contrary is rejected.

Your fish amazingly live every day in 8 ppm ammonia water and the lethal limit is .05? Interesting


Best false stall thread of '22.

 

[brandon429]

You have been great about posting tank pics as needed, appreciate that. Being able to see the fish everyday not having trouble breathing is a big deal in diagnostics

Disease from skipping preps = some but not all fish may have labored breathing while no other symptoms show in the display from corals or clean up crews/ non fish animals

Ammonia issue: all fish die in a day after all fish hover at the very top, easily spotted in pics, because gills were burned. No corals open, water a hazy mess, that's ammonia issues.

What does your pics show given those two extremes (ammonia noncontrol causes extremes / an animal with no liver can't filter ammonia, that animal shows extreme behavior)

This here is symptomless ammonia control claims - that can't happen. Your tank would be all dead if what you're staying was true

I can't believe nobody took my proof bounty lol

Ok forty bucks for an ump here to show prior work on a verified 9 month cycle break. I'll keep raising the $ bar to show there's no meat in the one off findings in this thread. You don't need cycling bac in a nine month reef you need to put down the cheap ammonia kit that you can Google and see this confusion happening for decades


Go get a digital meter like the article above uses.

 

[brandon429]

Mini summary of the thread so far:

-no location / source for constant ammonia input has been found for now 7 pages

-no antibiotics have been dosed

-a power outage has been guessed at. equal to that guess is the updated full tank pics that show a full running reef, any day they’re posted. When we read about power outage reefs, there’s 100+ posts to read for patterns, they’re loss vs wins posts. Wipeouts, or success, no middle ground. Nobody from that lot has a perfect looking reef two weeks later, but no ability to filter the water.

-no matter the bounty, current cycle umpires advising hard stall/all dead bacteria will not post a simple link showing them encountering, verifying and fixing such an issue ever before. This round is the first


-Tarichas article shows what reef displays do with ammonia. It is not possible to read his analysis and think Brian’s tank isn’t running ammonia down to .001-.006 ppm nh3

you are stating the level is 8

-my threads are tanks from other people who show what reefs do with ammonia, we’re at zero losses in those threads. Zero losses, thousands of cycles called.

-a disease forum exists for stern warning about setting up reefs without disease prep. Thousands of posts show your two fish symptoms being cured by applying disease controls, not bottle bacteria

preps were skipped here. Fish disease is then ruled out instantly by peers focused on solely your api reading.


-no forum exists for ammonia issues because there aren’t any ammonia issues in display tank reefing any more so than there are hydration issues in a display aquarium.


-when you search out threads “ammonia stuck at 8.0 ppm” what’s the kit being used in 100% of the posts


-search, and read, for the love of Pete, Randy’s article on ammonia in a reef tank. Does it allow for this thread?

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-02/rhf/index.php

-what test kit is used here? Is that not as notorious for problems as any kit you could ever imagine, based on posts?



given all those summary details, what’s the most likely scenario here

 

[reef_1]

Your fish amazingly live every day in 8 ppm ammonia water and the lethal limit is .05? Interesting

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Stop spreading false information!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1) Some of his fish died

2) Dont mix 8ppm total ammonia with 0.05 free ammonia

3) In 0.05 free ammonia fish happily lives for extended periods, see this study for example:

(PDF) Ammonia and nitrite toxicity to false clownfish Amphiprion ocellaris

PDF | False clownfish, Amphiprion ocellaris, is one of the most commercialized fish species in the world, highly produced to supply the aquarium market.... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

www.researchgate.net

As you can see for young clowns 0.75 mg/L free ammonia starts to be a problem, but 50 percent of fish survives in that for more than 4 days. That can easily be 8ppm total ammonia at low ph and temp. This study is for young small clowns and young, smaller fish has less tolerance to ammonia.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Stop spreading false information!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[brandon429]

Can I get that prior work link from you, your experience on the matter vs just your posts here please

I promise to evaluate what you’re saying here if you’ll just show pattern work in the matter, priors.


I noticed you didn’t address the rest of the points / picked a couple easy rebuts/ address all the points please with your caption per subject, I’m curious to know your take on the tough parts of the list.


the reason I want to see one link of you working cycles is to see what details you identified and changed in the other threads. I want to be able to click on the name badge of the people owning the cycles you fixed, and then look up their tank arc without having to ask them.


my links provide that for you, fair request it seems. Without such a link I might be tempted to think there’s no basis for what you’re typing.

does 8 ppm nh4 convert to lethal or non lethal nh3 levels?

 

[brandon429]

please try and match the stated levels in this thread to Randy’s and Tarichas findings on what displays do with ammonia. We can condense your efforts down to that alone / I’ll be satisfied.

please relate their findings to this tanks ammonia issues, I’ll be happy with that. When I read those two science links, and then this thread, I’m seeing an api issue and not the first one ever seen/ the one billionth one seen and logged.

if you can show how this tank goes against what they wrote about then that will benefit cycling science.

 

[Cell]

I'll say it again, if the OP believes the tank is at a lethal ammonia level, perform a 100% water change and give the fish some relief. That would buy you enough time for the bottled bac to arrive.

 

[brandon429]

agreed, it’s the universal cpr action for anything in doubt. I’ve done nothing but 100% changes in my nano reef for 16 years because I like to export more vs less for my efforts.

Brian
please immediately take and post an ammonia reading when u do the change using the exact same kit.

 

[reef_1]

I'll say it again, if the OP believes the tank is at a lethal ammonia level, perform a 100% water change and give the fish some relief. That would buy you enough time for the bottled bac to arrive.

He cant, he doesn't have salt, its on order arriving only today, cause he listened to brandons "do nothing", "dont test ammonia", so he lost 3 days and fish started to die in the meantime.

 

[brandon429]

If you stir up sandbed waste, which isn’t ammonia, by pouring in new water roughly, I have some links for doom that caused so you better rip clean that tank vs lukewarm doubt mode

 

[brandon429]

reef_1 I’m watching you not address the challenges / noted. It’s hard if you have to relate this tank to those two articles on ammonia, what the common forum poster would do is focus on personal jabs only.


I was truly interested in knowing where you think this ammonia is coming from, and why no article has ever been written about a nine month reef losing its cycle.

nobody can post one link, article or sturdy for this phenomena but we can search out several examples of false 8 ppm api posts?

 

[Miami Reef]

@brandon429

Taricha used the API AND the seachem badge to confirm that the hannah checker was accurate.

Both of those tests show OP has ammonia. As stated above, lower ph can make ammonia less toxic. Some fish are more tolerant to ammonia than others. There’s nothing wrong and absolutely no harm in doing water changes and dosing bottled bacteria.

 

[brandon429]

Theres no harm, but it dilutes the truth in cycling science, that this filter isn’t broken. The recommend to add those items comes from no actual experience in the matter, at month nine of course.

this is the second time Im watching you dig in heels against fish disease possibility. You came around to supporting disease preps solely due to experiences that first round


you have a personal experience precedent for fish symptoms in the thread, no experience for broken cycles, and we have yet to discuss disease here other than in passing mention (we always see ammonia fear replacing disease preps in my threads, we study that phenomena routinely)

you can see in our actual work $ on the line cycling threads, hundreds of pages combined of cycle patterns, that cycle end dates are exact

don’t quote Taricha without noting how fast free ammonia was resolved in a running display.


I had requested to see a thread where any person here encountered this problem and fixed it before: the answer is zero. No analysts here have even seen this or fixed this before.



Taricha directly discusses that no display reef will pause with its ammonia command, ergo, the levels discussed in this post can’t happen because he shows you a chart for 1 day ammonia drop.

 

[Garf]

Analyzing Hanna Ammonia checker Hi784, chemistry and performance

Hanna's saltwater ammonia checker, Hi784 is out and I wanted to take a look and assess its performance for reef tank water, and see where some interpretation of results might be helpful. This post will include some data on a display tank processing ammonia, and in a later post I'll do a...

www.reef2reef.com

Brians tank is claiming to run opposite to those findings

How would we classify Tarichas way of measuring vs this thread? Which method is more likely true, which findings on ammonia command are most likely true given these two threads to compare? Did ammonia stall in his running tank

It's important for readers to see that in a false stall thread, any proof to the contrary is rejected.

Your fish amazingly live every day in 8 ppm ammonia water and the lethal limit is .05? Interesting


Best false stall thread of '22.

You are confusing total ammonia with free ammonia, yet again. I’ve posted possible reasons for this apparent miracle but you are unwilling to accept your theory may be wrong. Along with this, you are manipulating the figures to suite your own ego. The lethality limit of free ammonia is not 0.05ppm, in fact nowhere near it. However I fear you already know this and are creating falsehoods deliberately. I hope I am wrong however, as we can all be, even if you think you can’t be. You may have noticed I’ve unblocked your replies. Fire away with some rubbish about work threads till your hearts content.

 

[Miami Reef]

@taricha @Dan_P

Can you guys look over this thread and share your thoughts? We seem to be separated in 2 different sides and we would really appreciate having your thoughts.

 

[Cell]

He cant, he doesn't have salt, its on order arriving only today, cause he listened to brandons "do nothing", "dont test ammonia", so he lost 3 days and fish started to die in the meantime.

It's nobody's fault but the OP for not having salt always on hand. Attacking other members is not what we do here on this forum. Everyone is allowed their own opinion here. Focus on your own solution for the OP.

 

[brandon429]

I'm positive our best use of time for this tank will be finding together any links or articles possible that discuss ammonia noncontrol in any aquarium and pasting them here. There are noted causes for ammonia events, they're already known, no new challenges have been written about.

It will be helpful to not request others experience shown nor mine, we should simply link objective reads that apply here. If anyone has an alternate link beyond Randy's article/ post it and we can truly see how Brians reef relates to the article.


It would make sense that if something new is happening in Brians tank that has never been written about by chemists, someone will want to write about this challenge tank.

This thread has such rare issues that it may be worth a new article on loss of a cycle at month nine

It's 2022, what ammonia does in a display reef should be well known by now, but something brand new is being offered now. Nobody who likes marine microbiology should turn away from seeing this cycle challenge through.


Go get a digital test kit for this tank Brian pls

So you'll have a separate test on this water

Testing a different tank with your tester isn't enough, that other tank doesn't have the adulterants added this tank has. Taricha says the hanna checker won't be affected by prime and similar additives. Taking your sample water to a lfs who doesn't use digital gear also would be carrying the test kit adulterant over to their kits. Your tank needs a hanna meter and a ph test to get nh3 real values, which align with allowing a tank of fish to swim normally every day.

 

[OfficeReefer]

I did a 50% last night and still at 8.0 which leads me to believe it is much higher. I've got amazon rushing me some instant ocean. that big water change used my last bit of salt.

Move your fish to a QT with a heater, air, pvc elbow and fresh saltwater. The plants can handle higher elements than the fish but this would allow you to focus on finding whatever is releasing this.