At what level is ammonia toxic?

[Willbiker]

I have acquired some live stock from someone who was shutting his tank down. 4 fish, a star, couple of shrimp, a few crabs and a few snails going into my 625 litre which was lightly loaded with a couple of clowns and small CUC. I also took all his live rock and bio blocks too which is sitting in my sump as I figured this would help with the bio load and I generally could do with some more.

Anyway... I've been monitoring ammonia every day and have been getting readings of zero as usual however today I have noticed it start to creep. Its currently at about 0.2. It's the afternoon now and I have 120 lites of saltwater mixing and heating ready for a 20% change but wont be ready for a number of hours.

My question is....how toxic is 0.25 ppm ammonia? Will it cause stress to my already stressed new inhabitants? Do I need to stay up late and get that water changed asap or will 0.25ppm make no differience to health/ welfare and I can wait u told tomorrow to change the water?

Thanks

 

[brandon429]

No system that once controls ammonia lets it creep up, can’t occur if all animals are still alive.

its a test misread

a prior zero doesn’t factor

we can get zero on a blank read from nsw, add some prime to a mature running reef, then get a register of free ammonia even though there isn’t

I know you may not have used prime, it’s just some other confound. If you had a seneye ammonia meter it would show the truth

*post pics of the tank I’ll show you how fish distribution and position w show the ammonia is not rising. We can see how your wastewater flows across surface area for final verification. (Consider a tank with many fish bare bottom up top, no rocks, and all biomedia is sumped. Waste water might swirl at higher levels ammonia up top if it’s not distributed down across surfaces fast enough...but if the surface area is in the display and your fish are occupying all swim levels, you can’t have hovering ammonia it’s not possible)

 

[brandon429]

There is lab data out there showing toxicity ranges. But regarding actual observed practical toxicity maximums in a reef tank, nobody knows

we’ve never been able to measure it accurately till seneye and mindstream. Api and Red Sea and salifert cannot show thousandths ppm, the true working range for free ammonia when in the presence of sufficient surface area


and when it’s insufficient, the system crashes fast, overnite. Ammonia can never creep up in a reef tank it’s not possible it’s only non working seneye or non seneye test kit that will indicate it.


I have to offer cash to coax someone into helping me answer the question you posed. I’m still willing to pay.

Is anyone with a mindstream or seneye ammonia reader willing to co-fund a cycling experiment with me

Team Im wanting to offer to buy someone some cycling bacteria and two clownfish to track the effects of fish-in cycling. we want to see if it burns fish or not fish in cycling is absolutely on -fire taking off, can't be debate its a million dollar industry and nobody has bothered to spot...

www.reef2reef.com

search this on google: api .25 ammonia

a million returns, all of them wrong reads.


ammonia cannot hold at .25 it’s active, dynamic, heading to a crash or to the thousandths. No mid ground.

 

[Willbiker]

It's only been 2 days since I added the new inhabitants so bio load would have increased quite a lot. I was expecting to have to monitor it and potentially do some daily changes to keep ammonia at 0 until the nitrifying bacteria can catch up. I added all 20kg of his live rock too so I wasnt sure if this was enough to support the bio load increase. Its definitely creeping up as I've always measured zero ....I trust the test. I just wasnt sure if I need to act now or if it's not thay urgent at 0.25ppm

Thanks

 

[brandon429]

You are trusting a false read test. You described # of live rock enough to run any bioload


reef tank conventions move animals and rocks too, to start the convention, and they don’t recycle. They don’t show up a week early, they reef same day as the move, like you did.


the difference is only api

post a pic

ill link this thread to a 30 page study on api misreads. In no way do you have the first actual non controlled ammonia event


pics for proof. it cannot occur, your stuff would be dead already. No tank can go go two days without ammonia control


no animal in vet care will be swimming, acting normal, after two days in uncontrolled ammonia. The pics will likely show open corals, another confirmation. We need your pics to shore up truth, your thread is now part of stuck cycle search returns.

they think their cycle is stuck, and buy bottle bac, unneeded. Money transfers happen due to the concern the false read gives.


moving live rocks doesn’t recycle, or kill worms, that’s all been to justify api misreads in a world now of seneye data that shows it will never occur.

pic predictions:
- only the test makes the concern not the actual tank.

- fish occupying all oxygen zones.

- corals open

- clear water no cloud


you can’t be alerted to a tank barely unable to control ammonia with a test kit. When that condition happens for the first time in reefing, we will get a post of a dead tank, not a happy tank with a bad test read from api.

 

[Willbiker]

The rock in the tank is what I had previously except 1 piece .


And I pretty much got exactly the same amount again from this guys tank. So I pretty much doubled my live rock when adding this livestock...and then there is the block I added from his sump.

I understand the test could be wrong. But it's the first time time I've got a different result since I cycled the tank 3 months ago....2 days after I add lots of livestock. So I am inclined to trust the test is detecting more ammonia than normal.

Thanks

 

[brandon429]

your tank has no free dangerous ammonia. It’s so predictable we usually solve the matter before pics.

i listed above one way we can garner a false read in a cycled tank. It’s hard to let go of something we are supposed to trust. Api simply cannot produce accurate measures. It might be over reporting legit conversion rates. It might be misreading due to nitrate presence, which new water won’t have, the list never ends. Day after day after day it will just run normally, looks great

 

[brandon429]

Hey there is a time api is handy

when it turns purple

a dead fish is wedged in the rocks if that occurs. It’s not for low level assessments.
your tank and it’s animals and clarity and surface area positioning is reliable. We can even catch a non working seneye this way

ammonia runs in the thousandths, or we wake up to a dead tank.

No reefs run normally if ammonia isn’t totally controlled.
catching a false read seneye, admitted by seneye. Yes this one had me scared lol without the emails I might be not typing about ammonia currently

Ammonia slowly climbing?

This is a one shot chance to get seneye feedback im just itching to know if they can report any reef tanks with rock and sand, post cycle, that didn’t run in the thousandths ppm turnover rate his answer above seems to confirm normal as day, you have some ammonia, based on -your- tanks measure...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Willbiker]

Ok thanks for the reply. I will assume I dont need to act urgently!