Biological Filtration for Ammonium?

Salt Addiction

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So I have had an issue in one tank recently where it is reading .25 ammonia and until recently I had been flipping out trying to fix it. Long story short it is a false positive due to ammonium that got introduced from regular non DI RO water use by mistake, I have since fixed the issue. Makes sense as well given this particular tank has acros and several sensitive species that should of been dead had it been ammonia. Anyways, I have read ammonium except in very high concentrations is non toxic, but will my biological filtration remove it the same as ammonia so I can be rid of the false positive? If not is there a filtration resin I can use to avoid disrupting the balance already established?
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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its ok you dont have to worry, a running reef tank can not have true free .25 ammonia or even true free .1 level ammonia, post pics, we'll detail several factors off pics that prove your ammonia is indeed in the .00x thousandths.

where the fish swim in the pic, matters in proofing ammonia

open corals vs closed up tight/near death

snails moving around happy, your free ammonia mine canaries
any open fanworms, they'll never ever open in the presence of free ammonia. They'll climb out of the tubes, lay on the sand and die if your ammonia goes above thousandths ppm conversion rate.

chem forum=people who are empirical and take measures before guessing. as premature as my assurance may sound, you didnt post that you had a tank in distress, cloudy, smelly, near loss as a reading much above .02 ppm free ammonia would certainly cause. I figured if you had a dead tang fish wedged in the rocks, that'd be in the descrip :)


**there is no action required on your part, your reef is simply going to self manage**
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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*Im aware you may have an input source to rule out/makeup or top off water

the handy part of your pics will show if your tank is processing that as normal extra bioloading, or faltering because of it. I bet the pics look awesome.
 
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*Im aware you may have an input source to rule out/makeup or top off water

Yeah, I thought the unit I had purchased included DI but it was normal RO. Wasnt until my readings hit 4.0 inside 2 days that I caught it. Even then though everything was acting normal.

I got a few pictures, although by the time I saw this it was lights off already so most of them are closed for the night. I will try to get some tomorrow when the lights come on and everyone opens back up. On a side note anyone know how to get a good picture color wise under LEDs?

20200522_203850.jpg


20200522_203926.jpg


20200517_182601.jpg



20200517_182556.jpg


On a side note the guy on the right has never been happy, even at the store. Any suggestions? I got him halfway up with the Montis but was thinking about moving him. Currently under 3 Red Sea RL90s. You can also see the scallop above the monti in this (small guy next to the aptasia, not the big shell), which should be first to die if there is ammonia?

20200522_204011.jpg


I have a few other leathers that are going nuts as well but since lights are off everyone is closed up. Also the Goniopora seems happy and is out, again though currently closed up due to lights off. Fish wise I have a Hawaiian Tang, Hippo, Foxface, Royal Gramma, Citron Goby, and a Skunk Cleaner and Tiger Pistol that are all going around doing there thing fat and happy with no labored breathing. Snails are doing great and coming out for the night, emerald crabs are out and hermits are doing there thing. I have always had readings of 0 in every tank I have run so while I know everyone seems good the reading even if its false is freaking me out.

I also have a Tiger Cucumber and Lettuce Nudi that are doing well but are currently in parts unknown (125 with 150lbs of rock), saw them earlier today though.
 
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Should of added. Tank has a Pro Clear Sump rated for 200 gallons with a Marine Pure 8x8x4 block, and 3 large bags of Marine Pure Gems in it. Its a Marineland Reef Ready with the side overflows and I have put a circulation pump in each to bring water from the bottom to top so that I can load them up as well, each has about 2 gallons worth of Marine Pure Spheres in it. In Theory this should be able to filter somewhere around a 600+ gallon tank bio wise.
 
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its ok you dont have to worry, a running reef tank can not have true free .25 ammonia or even true free .1 level ammonia, post pics, we'll detail several factors off pics that prove your ammonia is indeed in the .00x thousandths.

where the fish swim in the pic, matters in proofing ammonia

open corals vs closed up tight/near death

snails moving around happy, your free ammonia mine canaries
any open fanworms, they'll never ever open in the presence of free ammonia. They'll climb out of the tubes, lay on the sand and die if your ammonia goes above thousandths ppm conversion rate.

chem forum=people who are empirical and take measures before guessing. as premature as my assurance may sound, you didnt post that you had a tank in distress, cloudy, smelly, near loss as a reading much above .02 ppm free ammonia would certainly cause. I figured if you had a dead tang fish wedged in the rocks, that'd be in the descrip :)


**there is no action required on your part, your reef is simply going to self manage**

Fish are swimming all over but mostly mid level and keeping near the rocks given they dont like the kids running up to look at them, darting among rock and such like usual. Fanworms are all out and happy, or were at least prior to lights out. Snails and such doing their snail thing.
 

brandon429

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What we're finding out in today's bacterial/ free ammonia studies is that when a non seneye kit says there's a problem, but the tank is working fine as that one is, with massive amounts of aged coralline substrates, there's never free ammonia building up in the tank.

We think those non seneye kits can't show the true conversion rate for ammonia, they over report natural shifts that under seneye would show in the thousandths ppm turnover rate, if calibrated and working properly.

Seneye owners don't post outliers, and any tank that overcomes its surface area is heading for a crash, there is no inconsequential lack of ammonia control.


additionally, there’s a searchable subset of reefers who actually dose raw ammonia to reefs for nitrogen, they can show in their threads how active surface area always does the job even though they're exceeding your worst possible input via unfiltered water, worst case scenario.


This tank has ammonia under control, excellent documentation. I'll be linking to this thread for study. We have a seneye reading posted where the owners tank was too big to retrieve a dead tang and the whole time it disintegrated the meter never moved out of the thousandths ppm turnover rate

i know we haven’t ruled out your input source having free ammonia, but the tank is not going to crash on the current input rates, and no extra filtration needed.
 
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