Ammonia slowly climbing?

[PRock]

Hey all, I'm having an ammonia problem. According to my Seneye Reef (multiple slides) and my Red Sea test kit I have ammonia in my tank. It's a 112g system that's almost a year old. I started seeing Ammonia slowly tick up around the first of the month, but I couldn't immediately locate the source - all the fish are still kicking, few frags I had still looked ok, nems were still happy, crabs and snails still doing their thing - and 5-10% water changes didn't seem to make a dent. Eventually after about 2 weeks it had climed to the point where the ammonia alarm started going off on the Seneye, so I decided to drain my sump, rip out the filter socks clean up all the algae I had in there from my apparently not working refugium and install a filter roller. The sump is about 30 gal when full (when the return pump is off) so this amounted to almost a 30% water change. The filter roller is working, I'm dosing MicroBactor7 & API Ammo-Lock, I have 2 Brightwell XPORT-Bio dimpled bricks, 1 XPORT-NO3 brick, a media reactor full of XPort Bio, NO3 and PO4 media, and a RSK-300 Skimmer pulling good skimmate but my ammonia is still climbing and is setting off the alarms again. At this point I'm doing 5-10% water changes daily and it's not making a dent in the Ammonia numbers, my Nems are stressed, my corals are stressed or dying, and I've lost at least one emerald crab Help.

Parms:

• Salinity 1.026 (Using Brighwell Neo-Marine)
• Temp 78 +- .5 (Seneye)
• PH 8.1-8.0 (Seneye)
• PO4 0.12 (Hanna ULR)
• Nitrate 2 (Red Sea)
• Alk 9.8dkh
• NH3 70ppb (Seneye)
• NH4 14ppb (Seneye)
• Red Sea ammonia test shows 1.2-2.0 range

Any advice would be awesome.

 

[Fishy212]

Hey man. Sorry to hear about your troubles. Just a thought outside the box for you. The live rock you are using now. Did you start with it? was it cured? Did you use it to seed the tank?? did you use any kinds of medication or treatment inside your display? Does not make sense if you have all the fish and inverts accounted for. What if its coming out of the live rock?

 

[PRock]

Hey man. Sorry to hear about your troubles. Just a thought outside the box for you. The live rock you are using now. Did you start with it? was it cured? Did you use it to seed the tank?? did you use any kinds of medication or treatment inside your display? Does not make sense if you have all the fish and inverts accounted for. What if its coming out of the live rock?

Thanks - I started the tank with Dry Rock and Dry Sand, seeded with Bio-Spira, Dr Tim's One and Only, and Micro Bacter7 (added a different one each week during my cycle). I've used chemiclean on the tank, but that was months ago. I did some trace element dosing after an ICP test, but really the only things I've been adding otherwise are Vibrant once a week since December, Ocean Magic from Algae Barn, and SeaChem 2part to try and keep my alk and whatnot stable.

I started the Vibrant because I had a massive hair algae outbreak (mostly in my refugium) that was starting to take over, and it's done an amazing job of cleaning that up. I actually thought I was finally getting to a good place because I've started to see Coraline in spots all over the tank but this ammonia spike is making me think otherwise.

Oh! and I was feeding twice a day (frozen,mixing up between different types - Mysis, Spirulina Brine Shrimp, Rod's Food) but since this started I've cut back to once a day to see if that might be part of the problem, but it doesn't seem to be helping either.

 

[tamanning]

Ammonia usually means there is something dead in there. what substrate are you using?

 

[j.falk]

Anyone spraying glass cleaner around the tank?

I'd also recommend using Prime instead of Ammo-Lock.

 

[KrisReef]

I wonder if the VIBRANT is interfering with the ammonia testing results?
Ammonia that high should be fatal to fish?

 

[PRock]

Ammonia usually means there is something dead in there. what substrate are you using?

I have a bout an inch of sand in the tank, that I siphon with each water change. I'll admit that I'm not getting everywhere. I also have 2 Conche's and a Pistol Shrimp that churn up the sand. Also have a ton of dwarf Cerith snails, normal Cerith snails, 2 Turbo's, some Trochus Snails, and about 2 dozen of various kinds of hermits.

 

[PRock]

Anyone spraying glass cleaner around the tank?

I'd also recommend using Prime instead of Ammo-Lock.

Only cleaners around the tank are CarePanes from Tunze.

And Seachem Prime? I'll track some down.

 

[tamanning]

I have a bout an inch of sand in the tank, that I siphon with each water change.

so not a deep sand bed. you said all of your fish and inverts are accounted for could something have fallen in there and be hidden?

 

[PRock]

I wonder if the VIBRANT is interfering with the ammonia testing results?
Ammonia that high should be fatal to fish?

I somewhat suspect that the only thing keeping the fish around at this point (assuming my numbers are true) is the fact that I'm dosing AmmoLock.

 

[j.falk]

Before we go any further, are all of the fish acting normal...swimming around fine...eating fine?

 

[Malifry97]

@brandon429 what are your thoughts?

 

[PRock]

Before we go any further, are all of the fish acting normal...swimming around fine...eating fine?

Yeah, the only things so far that seem to be showing stress are my corals and nems. The Zoa's and Nems are closed up about 80% of the way, but the fish appear normal, noone's flashing or breathing heavy from what I can see watching them.

3 Wrasses, Coral Beauty, Royal Gramma, Firefish, Watchman Goby, Green Clown Goby, Jester Goby, 2 Clowns, and a Cardinal fish

 

[j.falk]

Good. That is definitely a good sign. Ammo Lock can give you false readings but reading your livestock will always give you a good idea of how things are really going no matter what a test kit says. If your ammonia was sky high your fish would be letting you know.

My advice...large water changes. 25 - 50% at a time. Whatever is in the water stressing out your corals and anemones needs to be diluted asap.

 

[PRock]

Yeah, the only things so far that seem to be showing stress are my corals and nems. The Zoa's and Nems are closed up about 80% of the way, but the fish appear normal, noone's flashing or breathing heavy from what I can see watching them.

3 Wrasses, Coral Beauty, Royal Gramma, Firefish, Watchman Goby, Green Clown Goby, Jester Goby, 2 Clowns, and a Cardinal fish

And I've seen everyone in the last 24 hours too. I don't see the firefish or Clown Goby right now, but they love to hide in the rockwork, so it normally takes a while to find them unless I'm feeding the tank.

 

[PRock]

so not a deep sand bed. you said all of your fish and inverts are accounted for could something have fallen in there and be hidden?

I'm not sure what might have done that, I have a screen top on the tank so I'd assume anything big enough to cause this would've been caught by my screen top.

 

[brandon429]

Pls post a full tank shot

free ammonia causes things we can see in pic details. And when the details show no ammonia, a test saying there is free ammonia wont be correct if you can account for animals, no death


is this the first misreading seneye? We rely on seneye to put api ammonia posts in order


Can you post current seneye readings w the tank pic, all those additives might be confounding.

a few posts back I recall someone mentioning malfunction in the seneye and they had to get it serviced or replaced but it’s so rare. We’ve been slaying stuck cycle threads with seneye.

I hadn’t heard of seneye confounding but a test is a test, in the end the biology is the decider. Free ammonia has tremendous impacts, exactly like full kidney damage has impacts in vet or human medicine, very fast impacts

 

[PRock]

Pls post a full tank shot

free ammonia causes things we can see in pic details. And when the details show no ammonia, a test saying there is free ammonia wont be correct if you can account for animals, no death


is this the first misreading seneye? We rely on seneye to put api ammonia posts in order


Can you post current seneye readings w the tank pic, all those additives might be confounding.

a few posts back I recall someone mentioning malfunction in the seneye and they had to get it serviced or replaced but it’s so rare. We’ve been slaying stuck cycle threads with seneye.

I hadn’t heard of seneye confounding but a test is a test, in the end the biology is the decider. Free ammonia has tremendous impacts, exactly like full kidney damage has impacts in vet or human medicine, very fast impacts

Attached is a FTS, Seneye App Dashboard and my Seneye NH3 and NH4 graphs.

When I originally started seeing the ammonia creep I tested with the Red Sea kit and wasn't seeing anything, but the Seneye kept going up so I did the sump work and scrubbed the seneye and replaced the slide. When the readings stablized again and started climbing for the 2nd time I reached out to Seneye and they looked at my data feed and suggested that I needed to clean my device, so I pulled it from the tank, tossed the slide and soaked it in a 5% citric acid solution for about 30 minutes, scrubbed it again, and put it back in the tank. I then swapped it over to a bucket full of RODI to check to see if maybe my RODI was the source (I hadn't changed my RODI filters in a while) and then I tested again with my Red Sea kit and found zero in the RODI, but 1.2 in the tank. But my NH4 readings never seemed to match up with what I expect from the NH3 reading, so it was suggested that I had an air pocket in the Seneye, so I chucked the slide again, and replaced it underwater to make sure I didn't have that problem. All the NH4 spikes you see on the graph are from the slide swaps.

 

[WVNed]

You should find out if your water company changed to chloramine and is using it instead of chlorine in your water.
If you use Prime for ammonia in your tank it will test like you have ammonia for a long time. I wonder if Ammo lock does the same thing.

 

[PRock]

You should find out if your water company changed to chloramine and is using it instead of chlorine in your water.
If you use Prime for ammonia in your tank it will test like you have ammonia for a long time. I wonder if Ammo lock does the same thing.

The website still says they're using Chlorine, but I'll reach out and ask.