Consistent Low Levals of ammonia

[sal16cal1]

I have had consistent low ammonia in my tank for the past 6 mo. Based on Hanna ammonia checker between .05-.20z Doesn’t matter how many water changes I do it always rising. There are no dead organisms in the tank. I have 2 tidal 110 hob and 1 tidal 55 hob, and an octopus reef skimmer hog for a 75 gallon tank. I have filtration on top of filtration. I change -30 percent of the water a week. I’m at a loss I’m about to tear the tank down and start all over. My tank is not overstocked I have one 4 inch fox one 4 inch Niger a baby dogface and a 4 inch blue jaw trigger. I definitely do not overfeed.

Could my skimmer be leaking? I’m out of ideas

 

[Garf]

I have had consistent low ammonia in my tank for the past 6 mo. Based on Hanna ammonia checker between .05-.20z Doesn’t matter how many water changes I do it always rising. There are no dead organisms in the tank. I have 2 tidal 110 hob and 1 tidal 55 hob, and an octopus reef skimmer hog for a 75 gallon tank. I have filtration on top of filtration. I’m at a loss I’m about to tear the tank down and start all over. My tank is not overstocked I have one 4 inch fox one 4 inch Niger a baby dogface and a 4 inch blue jaw trigger. I definitely do not overfeed.

Could my skimmer be leaking? I’m out of ideas

I'm assuming it's reading total ammonia (NH3 + NH4), if so, that's totally normal in a reef tank. There's a Mr saltwater tank vid about this on YouTube somewhere. Might be this one;

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

fish are always pooping and food always rotting, so ammonia constantly being added in trace amounts.

 

[brandon429]

that ammonia should be zero in a reef tank is the #1 tell of old cycling science (we were all trained that way initially)

there's always some in transition if there is active feed+ waste being produced in the tank, and today's test kits pick that up quite well usually although as massively varying ranges kit to kit. this phenomena is why we think API gets the bad rap for it's ammonia test. the ruleset being wrong might be 80% of that issue. the other 20% is truly just because api stinks lol.

handiest tenet of new cycling science: we don't need to test for ammonia or nitrite at any phase in display tank reefing and that includes dry rock cycling or any other cycle approach someone wants to try. we already know what # of days wait will lend ammonia control- lengthy test threads have been in place for years to log results.

stop testing for ammonia in a display tank to save your issues.

if you want to run a quarantine low surface area tank, then get a common seachem badge. those still fail, but not often.

in a reef tank using common live rock, simply don't test for ammonia and nitrite as they will be fine if the tanks fish are not rotting throughout the system. remove any dead fish to control ammonia safely in reefing; testing is no longer required.

 

[taricha]

I have had consistent low ammonia in my tank for the past 6 mo. Based on Hanna ammonia checker between .05-.20z

This is a known issue with the chemistry. Interpret 0.1-0.2ppm as zero.
see below for details...

Here you can see a few features.
1) the expected spike of +0.5ppm ammonia is well measured (actual calibration curve in a later post when I get more reagents).
2) the depletion trend is consistent, and the checker captured very well the mechanics of what's going on.
3) the consumption rate is consistent with the idea that actual ammonia is consumed rapidly in a tank like this: in fact the consumption rate is pretty steady at 0.5, 0.4, 0.3 down to 0.2 ppm ammonia. It makes very little sense to suggest consumption suddenly stops at 0.15ppm.
Instead it is far more likely that the detected 0.1-0.2ppm ammonia that people are measuring is simply a test kit artifact, and very unlikely that tanks deplete ammonia rapidly from 0.5ppm to 0.2ppm then just stop.

Bottom line:
Hanna's test is consistent, fast, and very sensitive to changes in ammonia within the same water. It can not tell you if your reef water has zero or 1 to 2 tenths ppm ammonia, and any values reported in the range of ~0.2ppm or similar should be interpreted as clean zero.