Ammonia Testing Issues

[GrampsReef]

I would appreciate advice on a good testing method for Ammonia under $250.00 and advice on ammonia level in my tank.

I'm having trouble reading the result using my API ammonia test kit. The color change is too subtle for me to read. It went from zero to somewhere above zero to maybe 0.5ppm. I performed a 10% water change which had no affect on the ammonia that I can tell. All fish and live stock look happy.

Tank Info:

• 55 gallon
• 2 months old
• Water parameters stabilized 10 days after setting up tank
• I have 6 fish
• 10 corals
• 1 anemone
• 80 pounds of live rock
• 40 pounds of sand

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[TexanCanuck]

It may sound silly, but stop measuring Ammonia.

Here's my logic:
1) the practical levels of ammonia in an established reef tank are VERY small (not zero, but very close to it), making it very difficult for any hobby-grade test kit to give reliable results ... especially the ones where you need to eyeball a color change against a card. Then there's also the trouble of figuring out how much is "free ammonia" versus ammonium and all that ...

2) Once the tank has been fully cycled, your best measurement is Nitrate ... and while it certainly is a lagging metric (compared to measuring Ammonia directly), it gives you a better long-term indication of the health of your overall tank and maintenance regimen.

Just my $0.02

 

[brandon429]

Agreed


on seneye I bet all chips this tank runs .002-.009


they all do


and your title is only a test read issue, not a loss description and even if it was that’d be fish disease


no two month running reefs need ammonia testing they all control it fine, ammonia cannot drift out of spec, it’s the most locked in control param of all with the least diurnal or any other flux in my guess.


the two top most never needed to be tested for in reefing parameters are nitrite and ammonia heck I don’t even want either posted in my cycling threads as misreads rule the day and cause doubt in the method of prediction cycling.


you don’t need a seneye to make this prediction, this is what reef tanks run at approximately in any common display with any common degree of live rock in the display.

 

[polyppal]

if the tank is established, yeah you don't need an ammonia test kit. DO invest in some good Nitrate/Phosphate test kits though, that's where your likely to run into issues. If your having issues with coral health its likely because the tank is still new and water chemistry isn't stable.

I use the hanna phosphate and alk meters, Red Sea for nitrate/calcium

 

[GrampsReef]

It may sound silly, but stop measuring Ammonia.

Here's my logic:
1) the practical levels of ammonia in an established reef tank are VERY small (not zero, but very close to it), making it very difficult for any hobby-grade test kit to give reliable results ... especially the ones where you need to eyeball a color change against a card. Then there's also the trouble of figuring out how much is "free ammonia" versus ammonium and all that ...

2) Once the tank has been fully cycled, your best measurement is Nitrate ... and while it certainly is a lagging metric (compared to measuring Ammonia directly), it gives you a better long-term indication of the health of your overall tank and maintenance regimen.

Just my $0.02

Thanks. My Nitrate is staying at zero. I'd love to stop checking Ammonia.

 

[GrampsReef]

Thanks everyone for the info. I was thinking something was wrong because everything in my tank is in great shape. I'll stop checking the Ammonia.
By the way, I was looking into a Seneye. Is it worth the money since Ammonia is not a concern?

 

[brandon429]

That reef is in the lower thousandths not even the upper

Mega surface area is why

I can't recommend buying a seneye because nobody likes the par meter nor the pH

It'll be spending two hundred bucks to measure something a free pic will tell us

It's sole utility is proving that bottle bac salespersons who wrote cycling rules have been ripping us off with false stall claims, and secondarily to discover hidden nuances in cycling and ammonia dynamics that will never impact a reef such as that. I'd take a free one, but never buy one, strange since I'm seneyes biggest fanman lol

 

[brandon429]

Gramps can you help me compile some tests vs picture comparisons I use in cycling threads


can you run the ammonia kit you have and post a pic of the vial after waiting however long the directions say to wait for a reading, sitting right on its indicator card in bright clear room light so we can contrast the two indicators (pic vs test)

prediction: per Dans advice on nh3 vs nh4 alarming, I bet as nh3 the test looks halfway decent and as nh4 it looks alarming.

if it looks alarming even as nh3 interpretation based on the pic then that will be logged as a total misread- the fault of the kit, not you


I can use that on page nine of my collected bad kit reading thread if applicable

there’s a collection running for nine pages where false nh3 readings are in place, all tanks perfectly running and clear

 

[TexanCanuck]

By the way, I was looking into a Seneye. Is it worth the money since Ammonia is not a concern?

I purchased one when I setup my latest tank ... my logic at the time was that it would give me an "objective second opinion" on water chemistry and a real-time view into spikes that could indicate an upset condition long before it showed up in my Nitrate readings (which I only do on a weekly basis). I also thought having the PAR meter would be useful to help me tune my lights.

I think it was helpful while I was stocking the tank ... it gave me another real-time data point to let me know I wasn't adding livestock at a rate faster than the biological filter could adapt. While it didn't really give me actionable advice, it felt kind of like a fact-based way to confirm that I wasn't rushing the process.

Fast forward a year ... I never look at the darn thing.

I change the silly slides once a month, and when I do I have to immediately re-calibrate both its temperature and pH readings it gives me so it stops raising nuisance alarms, then I immediately go back to ignoring it again.

I used the PAR meter exactly once to make sure I was getting enough light at the substrate in the back left corner and then never used it again.

So, in retrospect, it was a $250 investment that made me feel better for a few months until I got enough experience with the tank to realize I didn't need it at all. I don't think I'd do it again.

 

[GrampsReef]

Gramps can you help me compile some tests vs picture comparisons I use in cycling threads


can you run the ammonia kit you have and post a pic of the vial after waiting however long the directions say to wait for a reading, sitting right on its indicator card in bright clear room light so we can contrast the two indicators (pic vs test)

prediction: per Dans advice on nh3 vs nh4 alarming, I bet as nh3 the test looks halfway decent and as nh4 it looks alarming.

if it looks alarming even as nh3 interpretation based on the pic then that will be logged as a total misread- the fault of the kit, not you


I can use that on page nine of my collected bad kit reading thread if applicable

there’s a collection running for nine pages where false nh3 readings are in place, all tanks perfectly running and clear

Yes I will do that in a few minutes.

 

[GrampsReef]

Yes I will do that in a few minutes.

Gramps can you help me compile some tests vs picture comparisons I use in cycling threads


can you run the ammonia kit you have and post a pic of the vial after waiting however long the directions say to wait for a reading, sitting right on its indicator card in bright clear room light so we can contrast the two indicators (pic vs test)

prediction: per Dans advice on nh3 vs nh4 alarming, I bet as nh3 the test looks halfway decent and as nh4 it looks alarming.

if it looks alarming even as nh3 interpretation based on the pic then that will be logged as a total misread- the fault of the kit, not you


I can use that on page nine of my collected bad kit reading thread if applicable

there’s a collection running for nine pages where false nh3 readings are in place, all tanks perfectly running and clear

I just checked it. I use a clean test tube that I first rinse with water from my tank. Then I fill it so that it has 5ml of water. I shake the bottle of both part one and part two and then place each into the tube and shake. The wait time is 5 minutes. These pictures were taken outside using the sun as the light. It is interesting to me that the color is much easier to read in the picture than it is in real life. I'm still not sure if it is 0 or 0.25. I hope this helps your effort.

 

[brandon429]

That is 100% perfect and represents a working API kit, I do not get to jack hammer them like I like to do



that nh4 reading above would be ten times less as nh3 per all of Dan's and Randy's writing on the matter, and that's a safe zone which matches the pics perfectly. I was hoping for light green so I could go to town against api lol that's a good kit you have there. even if it was slightly darker green it'd still be accurate after total ammonia nitrogen conversion, that's a working kit and working wait time/fill time/reagent preps not expired etc.

if all cyclers had that kit it would put the notion of stalled cycles to rest. but they don't, so in three days time we will find ten more non working kits lol clone that one its dang good.

 

[GrampsReef]

That is 100% perfect and represents a working API kit, I do not get to jack hammer them like I like to do



that nh4 reading above would be ten times less as nh3 per all of Dan's and Randy's writing on the matter, and that's a safe zone which matches the pics perfectly. I was hoping for light green so I could go to town against api lol that's a good kit you have there. even if it was slightly darker green it'd still be accurate after total ammonia nitrogen conversion, that's a working kit and working wait time/fill time/reagent preps not expired etc.

if all cyclers had that kit it would put the notion of stalled cycles to rest. but they don't, so in three days time we will find ten more non working kits lol clone that one its dang good.

That is great news. Thanks loads.