Sustained Ammonia spikes are misreads

brandon429

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The reason you think your reef tank can’t control its ammonia is due to false training from old cycling science. That and you don’t own a seneye on the tank in question: if you did, you wouldn’t ever think your ammonia was out of control



See what a seneye shows? Quick ammonia resolve

nothing stuck

ask your local veterinarian: can dogs or cats be symptomless while having no liver function, allowing a systemic buildup of toxic free ammonia while still running, climbing, eating, behaving normally day to day?

so why do reef peers always teach each other that sensitive marine organisms all swimming and acting fine are symptomless for weeks on end in a tank claimed to not have full control over free ammonia?

Because they're not seneye owners is why
believing old, dated and false cycling biology posts and articles is the second cause for all these false ammonia alert posts we worked below.

read on to see the patterns in play and how cycle umpires universally accept any stated ammonia measure without challenge: bacteria are always stated to be at a loss or nonfunctioning; it's never the case.

Cycle umpires are implying they’ve actually seen a broken display reef cycle: they haven’t. there aren’t any examples, anyone running seneye knows a cycle remains if water remains in the tank.

doubt in bacteria means you’ll click buy for replacement bacteria, forum peers are the source of 99% of the false cycling information we see ruling this hobby.


there is only ONE time you will ever see an ammonia problem in a display reef tank: when disease or hardware error kills multiple fish and you leave them in the tank to rot out for one reason or another. That’s it, there aren’t any other causes you’ll ever see someone posting about that will make a cycled tank unable to control its ammonia. perhaps a six pound ten year old anemone the size of a super large pizza left to rot in a 40 breeder might do it, but we’re talking extremes so extreme you won’t need a $9 test kit to discern the problem-you would remove the dead anemone.

Every reef tank featured here is symptomless other than a bad api test read, or red sea

Every false panic post on this thread is a non digital ammonia test kit, in a perfectly running reef tank that you can click and read it's entire history before they were collected here. All these threads collected have the same pattern: being taught that non digital test kits are infallible and that our resident aquatic bacteria somehow just stop working for some folks---have you ever, ever, ever seen a cycling chart where the ammonia line rises back up after day ten?

The first example thread to read in full is this one: api fail ammonia causing distress, fully cycled reef of very low bioload and pounds of coralline covered live rock that would never permit an ammonia spike sustained, not ever.


if you've read that first thread in full as recommended, you can now see how every post collected here is the exact same. panic induced by a non digital test kit. **even after nh3 conversion rules (see below) that reading above is false, that's too dark to be accurate. there's nothing wrong with his reef at all, and we discerned in the post he didn't use prime or other test adulterants, its a misread. his very slight overfill of the mark 5 mls does not change the sample darker, its a misread any way you slice it.







read that whole thread.

not owning a seneye is the main reason you think your ammonia isn’t controlled, none of our work examples are seneye owners; that should stand out to you…which tests caused the unfounded fear for every example we have here?

Even though we are months and years past cycling in following examples, the entrants are claiming their reefs didn’t follow the ammonia drop line at day ten from a cycling chart (theirs rose, and stuck at .2, the test kit from petsmart says so)


these are all cycle issues below. New cycling science knows they're reacting to false readings, old cycling science knows they’ll click buy anyway, just to be sure, even after we proof out things are fine.


notice this trend coming here: nobody on seneye ammonia testing is part of the alert mode. api and Red Sea ammonia, non digital test kits, constitute all our panic examples.


this is the basis of nearly all ammonia troubleshooting in reefing forums. we are trained to first accept any stated ammonia level as fact, and then look for ways the bacteria have died or been shorted.



Read the entire flow of this post, its an ideal outcome for a sustained ammonia alert post.


**most reefers have dosed water conditioners like Prime, this can cause false ammonia readings in some tests***

we never know what adulterants are in someone’s test water, they don’t think to mention it many times in cycle help posts.

many of our posts here will be that kind of false alarm and the open corals and clean water will show control of ammonia, not lack of control.

read this post, a real ammonia crash, see the cause, see what the tank looks like in pics

After having read both those initial links, on all future links as yourself this:
why do the tank pictures look so normal, every time, what's going on in pattern with reported ammonia noncontrol events>?


This thread will track example posts showing that no reef tanks have ghost sustained ammonia spikes even if our entry level test kits claim they do.

hallmark details in every post example coming: only a test kit causes alarm no other factors. No fish issues, bad smelling water, clouding, closed up tight animals, this thread will be solely misreads from test kits causing sheer madness. uncontrolled free ammonia kills your whole reef fast, it doesn’t pick off animals one by one over weeks time. That’s disease.


Here is Randy commenting on the nature of Free vs Total Ammonia in the reef tank. *When you use red sea or API ammonia, a step is required in conversion to get the nh3 levels, that's what we care about here. read Randy's description below, and see your test kit instructions for the conversion

********just about every example link we see will be someone reacting to nh4, which we expect to look elevated, vs nh3 which is over ten times less at our average pH and temp based on charts in the chemistry forum.



I predict nobody here truly had sustained ammonia and if you did, the title of your thread is about a crash, a tank wiped, not a test reading.

as of 2/26/24 a nice quick troubleshoot via tank picture and tank stated history (time running) was completed:
 
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brandon429

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see above the discussion on why/how non digital test kits can misread, and cause false alarms and attribution erros in cycle study posts.

all the kits in this entire thread were what type? digital or non-digital?


notice a pattern, a trend coming of completely false alarms and panic buying of bottle bac for claimed broken cycles that are not broken.


not any entrant here has an ammonia issue. if they did, their full tank shots would look bad, not normal
 
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brandon429

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#1


the entire thread above needs to be read to begin our hunt. Every post here though from various tanks in various states all share clues from this post.


*why/when/how titration kits misread isn’t our focus, we will show how tanks run fine because no nh3 is spiked and if it were, tank inhabitants die en masse. Plenty of posts work on the details of mis testing we focus on the tanks and the life inside here, using proofs other than test kits.



Look: another and the peers were believing the prime-adulterated test kit report lock stock and barrel




tracing out a false stall even before tank pics are posted. There are no stalled cycles at forty days. This is why old cycling science our peers teach us short changes the masses, we lose track of fish disease preps in focusing so much on seemingly stuck cycles that are not stuck if we just take an ammonia reading using digital kits.
 
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brandon429

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#2

look at the prediction vs outcome.

hey look, another
how's non digital ammonia testing working out for the masses in May of 2022? how's the lookback over the history of this thread looking in May of 2022?

How many seneye owners did we see panicking here? Why is that if we had to guess, looking back on the last couple years linked of recurring false ammonia alarms?





look at that fish disease post being blamed on initial cycle control: at month 4.
 
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study material. All reefs, thats 100% of reef tanks, can endure direct dosing of liquid ammonia it’s right there in twenty reefs.

they use seneye to show the conversion is about five minutes

and that’s why all stalled ammonia posts are wrong, because of what that thread above shows.

it’s not that some reefs lack proper surface area for rapid ammonia uptake even with spikes, it’s that 0% lack the ability and nobody is using reliable test kits, api and Red Sea will not help you here, they’ll send u into panic. Objective evaluation of every system will reveal a completely functioning filter that never faltered.

another, all same characteristics



not any reef listed in the next twenty pages will deviate from the predictable arrangement of materials and outcome. They all share one form of testing, though. Not any single cycle was affected here, they’re all false alarms.
 
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And now for a true legit issue, perhaps our only one


he added unrinsed old sand to his tank and all the fish died, see how nh3 and or bacterial rot compounds don’t have an irritation level, they have a kill your tank level or a controlled safely level, your active surface area doesn’t permit an in-between and when things do spike like above, they’re resolved in quick time but the damage from real nh3 is so devastating we dont even bother getting a test read. Nh3 wipes a tank when it legit spikes, you won’t need a test kit to tell you


thats what a real spike looks like, the tank tells you, not the kit.



****************notice how there are no sneak attacks in true ammonia wipes. We break a rule when a true recycling event occurs, and the condition would have not happened had the rule been kept


in false tank issue threads, only the test kit gives concern and they spend pages grasping at possible causatives

but above it was one action, adding in old sand into the top water, all fish died, then it resolved and no further losses occurred.


sandbed upwells are routinely associated with loss events in reefing its very stat significant zone of the rank to be casually flipping around for some reefs.
 
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see how a threads title affects how the ammonia test is validated or not, that’s a new posting trait discovered we are reviewing here.


even a dead animal can’t send ammonia to .25 in a reef tank, seneye owners who lose fish in systems have shown the meter doesn’t change as the rocks, surface area, simply handle the increase.

bottle bac was sold/purchased due to that misread, ammonia misreads constitute probably 1/3rd of annual bottle bac sales incorrectly per my assessment. That is another trend we can watch for in the posts. Added bacteria have no where to attach, they just float around until skimmed, taking up more oxygen and reducing the overall surface area of the system temporarily until currents get it all exported and back to balance.

another
 
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brandon429

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The way surface area works doesn’t just stop one day, it’s consistent for every tank.

****even in reef tanks where a legit insult like adding back old sand causes some loss, that condition is resolved in minutes due to surface area ability, nobody adds old sand and gets a fish wipe in two days, it’s within minutes of the action.
 
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another, took four pages to fix (false read whole time)
 
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We are never going to find a running reef with truly stuck ammonia at .25 or .5 or 8 ppm it’s all false reads. Active surface area doesn’t just stop working to allow the buildup and sustain.


ammonia events that legit occur, dead fish due to disease, resolve in a few minutes after the death is removed and water flow instated. The only test kits we own that can show the correct rebound rates are calibrated working and tuned seneye machines.

 
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Azenkendae repeatedly spurs on the fear in these posts, see below

 
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ScubaSkeets

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What is causing the misreads and how do you explain the inconsistencies when the tests do show ammonia (i.e .25PPM) and then a follow on test a couple few weeks later shows 0 ammonia?
 
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Show me the post where that occurred, as pics not as posted stated param readings. ~ I remember your post on stuck ammonia, we worked it for pages. It was never stuck.

api needs to be benchmarked with other kits for accuracy, we can see in the link example if other kits were used and we can check the context of the .25 with:

was the directions met on bottle bac # of days for cycling

how many days had the tank ran before the test

was any of it true live rock, which never allows a .25 other than on api


we can check to see if the water was clear, didn’t smell, on the original .25 misread that caused the alarm.

in all these links you can read above, we detailed how api is usually the root of these false alarms.

ammonia alerts are misreads:

 
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Case in point, your question on api was answered here:

You had live rock, which is skip cycle. You were shown this thread below on how skip cycles work, but skipped reading it due to the .25 which is understandable-false ammonia reads cause concern.


you met only the param reading portion for the concern, not the water, rocks age underwater etc, it’s how we know your reading was false and belongs in this thread. Only the kit said you had issues, not the tank. Ammonia issues cause clouding, smell and loss.



Im not seeing any pics for the .25 and the zero, only stated ranges.
 

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I just did this test on the same tank
20210306_083325.jpg
 
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Where’s the .25 pic before, from the thread showing green

I think we asked for it too in the thread


have you seen the posts where people do a simple water change and api shows .5

mixing up metabolites of some kind might be the issue, as nobody with a seneye agrees doing a water change, or moving rocks among tanks like yours is, causes free ammonia. Api testers report it so often google can show you thousands of misreads when compared to other kits. Your tank kept fish from the minute they were added.


a completely false read, look at the tank pics


another:


notice: we effectively rule out immediately any ammonia issues. He has none. We rule in fish disease buying him critical reaction time.
 
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ScubaSkeets

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Case in point, your question on api was answered here:

You had live rock, which is skip cycle. You were shown this thread below on how skip cycles work, but skipped reading it due to the .25 which is understandable-false ammonia reads cause concern.


you met only the param reading portion for the concern, not the water, rocks age underwater etc, it’s how we know your reading was false and belongs in this thread. Only the kit said you had issues, not the tank. Ammonia issues cause clouding, smell and loss.



Im not seeing any pics for the .25 and the zero, only stated ranges.
Please don't question whether or not I skipped reading. If you search my other posts, you will see that I have posted pics:

Thread 'Pic confirmation of false API ammonia readings' https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/pic-confirmation-of-false-api-ammonia-readings.803448/

I also responded to another post regarding the false API readings

Thread 'Tank transfer then ammonia spike at 0.25ppm.' https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/tank-transfer-then-ammonia-spike-at-0-25ppm.804282/
 
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brandon429

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that guy transferred his old sand, I’d say that counts as metabolites kicked up.


I asked yet again for your mid cycle pic because we wanted the pic here to go along with that prominent yellow one above

and, I’ve already troubleshot your cycles in all examples, if you disagree even after all the links here, then good for api they’ve built a solid loyalty base for some. Looks like I wasn’t too far off base, all your fish are alive (skipped fallow, countdown = six mos)


in the end folks want to debate a test read, unverified with another kit, despite what google shows about api or threads here

but my whole thread is about the context of the reading, we must include that. Already live rock, clear water, all life added stays alive because it was cycled when you set the rocks in

notice how you have to exclude all that framing to make your test accurate?

all kinds of unstated things cause api misreads, it does not do any good to try and find them all. Adding prime in reaction to an initial .25 causes darker green for example, but I’m sure that didn’t factor here.

when only an entry level test kit says there’s a problem, and all the context says there isn’t, defer to the context. That should be the takeaway from reading all these false ammonia issues.


here's one, a misread known by description of system. didn't even need to see the test kit nor the tank pic.










********Team look at this related thread below, we caught this one about to get messy right on page 1



do you see how there's no possible way that tank can be out of ammonia control, but the umpires started right down that path at the start? We don't have to verify how a cycle was completed, we can see it right in his opening tank picture. The problem is approaching broken cycle threads as if we've actually seen a broken cycle before, it gives the customer a sense of fear to think their cycle may be broken

his cycle isn't broken, we can see.


Red sea ammonia causing a fully cycled reef owner to repeatedly change all water in tank


*his kit was reading decently. What got him was old cycling science rules: thinking we must test for ammonia after the cycle to prove its in control. Updated cycling science: you don't have to test for ammonia after the cycle; it's self- correcting in anyone's reef tank all the time.
 
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ScubaSkeets

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I'm not disagreeing! My question here..on this thread... is what would cause a positive reading, as shown here:
Thread 'Pic confirmation of false API ammonia readings' https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/pic-confirmation-of-false-api-ammonia-readings.803448/

and a negative reading as shown here: (that I just did)
20210306_083325.jpg

These tests are from Tank#1

My other question regarding a .50ppm reading was a cycling question on Tank#2. I didn't post a pic of that because I was in agreement with you and didn't feel like beating a dead horse

Please don't misconstrue my question as being an API Fanboy. I get that API give false readings and a .25ppm is nothing to be concerned about. I was not replying to this thread to debate you..just wondering what would cause a positive reading on one day and a negative reading on another day.
 
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