Help with Ammonia level

[showjumper_girl2002]

Hi everyone! I'm a bit concerned about my ammonia level. Reading the test, it's hard for me to tell if it's at 0 or somewhere between 0.25 and 0.50. Not sure if it's much help, but I've included a picture of the color below along with my other parameters. My tank is about 4-5 months old. I did a 25% water change yesterday. Thoughts?

Overall, all my corals and fish seem happy, except for one coral who seems a little sad lol. He is what prompted me to test my water.

PH - about 8.2
Nitrite - 0
Nitarte - 0
Phosphate - 0
Calcium - 460
KH - 11

 

[showjumper_girl2002]

Forgot to mention, it's a 70 gallon tank and does have a skimmer.

 

[Garf]

Hi everyone! I'm a bit concerned about my ammonia level. Reading the test, it's hard for me to tell if it's at 0 or somewhere between 0.25 and 0.50. Not sure if it's much help, but I've included a picture of the color below along with my other parameters. My tank is about 4-5 months old. I did a 25% water change yesterday. Thoughts?

Overall, all my corals and fish seem happy, except for one coral who seems a little sad lol. He is what prompted me to test my water.

PH - about 8.2
Nitrite - 0
Nitarte - 0
Phosphate - 0
Calcium - 460
KH - 11

Looks good to me.
Seems like a silly question but did you put the plastic stopper on the vile to shake it, or use your finger?

 

[showjumper_girl2002]

Looks good to me.
Seems like a silly question but did you put the plastic stopper on the vile to shake it, or use your finger?

I used the stopper. I was told that using your finger could throw the results.

 

[Garf]

I used the stopper. I was told that using your finger could throw the results.

Yes, that’s correct. These kits can read a bit high sometimes. As long as you’ve had no major tank disasters, you should be sweet.

 

[brandon429]

Post pics of your tank, this will be an easy misread to fix because its impossible for a four month old reef to not follow the ammonia line of a cycling chart.

you have a nice api kit that’s way yellower than most, yours can pass for zero

 

[showjumper_girl2002]

Here is a pic of my tank. After looking at the calendar, it’s 5 months old.

 

[brandon429]

wow that is shockingly nice. these posts are way more fun when its green and people feel they're having 2 ppm, which they never ever are.

in your case Id have called that yellow reading zero anyway, and that aligns with the pics and known timeframes for cycling charts and cycled reefs. all set for sure, picture verified. that's a ton of active surface area, no bad ammonia would be allowed to linger it'd be used up promptly. you would have to input very, very smelly amounts of ammonia to cause a problem in that tank and be able to overcome its command ability, but with no input sources we know its just running perfectly.

check out this thread below, the polar opposite of your thread, yet the answer was the same:

 

[Garf]

Nowt wrong with that
As long as Calcium, alkalinity and Magnesium are there abouts.

 

[showjumper_girl2002]

wow that is shockingly nice. these posts are way more fun when its green and people feel they're having 2 ppm, which they never ever are.

in your case Id have called that yellow reading zero anyway, and that aligns with the pics and known timeframes for cycling charts and cycled reefs. all set for sure, picture verified. that's a ton of active surface area, no bad ammonia would be allowed to linger it'd be used up promptly. you would have to input very, very smelly amounts of ammonia to cause a problem in that tank and be able to overcome its command ability, but with no input sources we know its just running perfectly.

check out this thread below, the polar opposite of your thread, yet the answer was the same:

Thanks so much!

 

[brandon429]

EMERGENCY - Crazy Ammonia spike

@Randy Holmes-Farley tanks act normal during nh3 noncontrol issues? when zero sources for input have been discerned, we still headed right towards believing anything the test kit says. Bottle bac was over sold here 3x over. Suddenly the resident bacteria crashed here, with no cause, and killed...

www.reef2reef.com

B did an honorable job in this thread. my beef is with testers not test takers. If I had a ten thousand dollar reef showing bad on any param, and some web guy I didn't even know was all blasé about it, Id have doubts too.

but for studies, your ammonia will never, ever, ever be a causative unless you are dumping some in on purpose. even a dead fish will not kill your tank, that's massive surface area between rocks and sand u have. this thread above may come in handy one day.

readers will never stop trying to find the source for ammonia in that thread, to justify the test reading, there's not any source. Some questionable phyto added is not a huge amount, nobody is dumping gallons of good OR bad phyto in a tank, they're getting a feed size dose.

if we input a feed size dose of straight liquid ammonia, smells like literally a dead cat, into your reef or B's, nothing happens and the tank eats it up in 15 minutes. they already have threads in this forum where reef tanks are dosed with ammonia, as blast nitrogen feed.

every reef, by rule of surface area, oxidizes it all right away and none is left over. (none above the known safe levels fractional readings)