High Nitrite in established tank

[TheBryFry]

I have a 75g display with a 25g sump. The tank is around 18 months old at this point. For the past 6 months or so, I've been having a problem with spiking ammonia and nitrite as if the tank is starting a new cycle over and over. The problem seems to have started around the same time as a damsel went missing. I moved rocks and sand, completely cleaned the tank and sump top to bottom and even disassembled my plumbing and cleaned looking for the missing fish but to no avail. Could the one rotting fish be the cause of all these chemistry issues?

Stock:
2 ocellaris clowns
1 watchman goby
1 lawnmower blenny
1 flameback angel
5-6 blue legged hermits

The fish all seem fine and the only indication that anything is wrong is corals don't seem to be doing well. I've lost all my zoas and i have a GSP hanging on by a thread. I use exclusively RO/DI water from a BRS system making sure water coming out is at 0 tdi. I'm testing with both API and Red Sea kits and getting matching results. I'm at my wits end here.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

What values are we talking about?

 

[TheBryFry]

The api test turns purple almost immediately, and the red sea kit read bright pink like 1 ppm. After about a week the test will turn back to blue/pale pink which indicates to me that the bacteria did its job. But then a week later it will be back up again. I also forgot to mention i have a fire shrimp in the tank too, which is also doing fine. Ammonia seems to be on an opposite cycle of the nitrites, I'm talking api kit turns blue. It seems as though something is killing the bacteria over and over and it has to re-cycle.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

The api test turns purple almost immediately, and the red sea kit read bright pink like 1 ppm. After about a week the test will turn back to blue/pale pink which indicates to me that the bacteria did its job. But then a week later it will be back up again. I also forgot to mention i have a fire shrimp in the tank too, which is also doing fine. Ammonia seems to be on an opposite cycle of the nitrites, I'm talking api kit turns blue. It seems as though something is killing the bacteria over and over and it has to re-cycle.

That does seem unusual, and I'm not sure why it is happening.

Do you have a picture of the tank to give an idea of whats in it?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

The api test turns purple almost immediately, and the red sea kit read bright pink like 1 ppm. After about a week the test will turn back to blue/pale pink which indicates to me that the bacteria did its job. But then a week later it will be back up again. I also forgot to mention i have a fire shrimp in the tank too, which is also doing fine. Ammonia seems to be on an opposite cycle of the nitrites, I'm talking api kit turns blue. It seems as though something is killing the bacteria over and over and it has to re-cycle.

That does seem unusual, and I'm not sure why it is happening.

Do you have a picture of the tank to give an idea of whats in it?

 

[TheBryFry]

Let me know if you want any other angles, or if you want me to turn my whites up for a better view.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Certainly has plenty of surface area for nitrifying bacteria.

Maybe the issue is a test kit problem rather than a real issue.

I'd try confirming that the ammonia is an issue, and ignore nitrite which is not a toxicity issues like it is in fresh water.

 

[brandon429]

Agree it's ammonia in the thousandths system, that's what seneye would register based on surface area

Fish distribution too, no ammonia burning there, no 02 starving


Even with a dead damsel, that is a lot of rock

people are using seneyes enough now that patterns are emerging, very handy. We do have posts reporting stability during fish loss/ thousandths holding/ awaiting more inputs

Depending on which decade this thread is posted, actions advised range tremendously. that's a hold course, continue on setup not in challenge. If that was my reef I'd rob 30% off current lighting intensity overall and ramp back to current over a week.

 

[TheBryFry]

I've tested freshly mixed saltwater with both kits and confirmed no ammonia or nitrites. Will a small presence of ammonia give a false reading of nitrite?

 

[brandon429]

Cross reading is suspected agreed,

prime, water conditioners get false positives

most updated guess for that blank proofing issue: the test kits do detect pre-conversion ammonia rates but over report them. Seneye and actually mindstream agreed pre conversion rates in most all reefs are .00x

whereas api gives us .25 or .5 holding


its the *holding portion that marks a test issue in my opinion. I just kicked up a work thread where the sole purpose is to prove that no reef tank with rocks and sand runs outlier ammonia measures. It’s 100% compliant and we think a need/buy market for bottle bac revolves around telling the hobby that ammonia performance varies, tank to tank, while the best testers in 2020 say it doesn’t vary much tank to tank.

imo nitrite doesn’t factor at all, stop testing for it in reefing, and in the stalled cycle thread we think inability for any reef tank to control ammonia must result in compounding and loss within predictable timeframes, aka the classic crash. There is no ‘irritation’ level free ammonia permitted, it’s gold for our bio system and used up fast. To surpass the conversion ability of the system will get gray water and dead fish, 24 hours.

 

[TheBryFry]

I'm a bit confused on the conclusion here. Is the thought process that the test kit is just giving false readings? You mention a seneye, is that confirmed to give more accurate readings over standard test kits? Do you think an icp test would give the best results?

 

[brandon429]

its that your tank is ok for sure, no expenditures needed.

hope that helps/good news on a Wednesday

ammonia can never drift into instability, only dead fish or mass feed events cause spikes but the mechanics are up, down, back to steady state. Ammonia can’t hold, the reason not to buy better ammonia testers is because that science is reliable and saves you money. Thats a thousandths ppm tank as long as you have it running and can account for your fish.
If some calibration updates put the constant at .000x ppm, then that is what state any reef with rocks, sand, and a completed cycle will run as a baseline, whatever the savezone conversion rate for free ammonia is in a reef tank. Seneye measures only ammonia

we can run a reef and cycle a reef predictively now, without variation it saves us from testing the reliables and can focus on the variables like calcium and alk.
Ph per Randy’s update article, measures that can drift.
nitrite is simply no longer factored in updated cycling science. On purpose I collect tank starts where we began in purple nitrite levels.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I've tested freshly mixed saltwater with both kits and confirmed no ammonia or nitrites. Will a small presence of ammonia give a false reading of nitrite?

No.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I'm a bit confused on the conclusion here. Is the thought process that the test kit is just giving false readings? You mention a seneye, is that confirmed to give more accurate readings over standard test kits? Do you think an icp test would give the best results?

Sometimes kits give inaccurate readings due to user error, expired reagents, bad design, etc.

ICP will say nothing about nitrogen containing species like ammonia, nitrate, nitrite or atmospheric N2. They all look the same in a plasma.

 

[TheBryFry]

I just did a water change and tested nitrites in my freshly mixed water using the same kits. They read absolutely 0, which leads me to believe that there is no fault in the test kit

 

[brandon429]

No problem, still neutral in reef cycling or determining a start date/ unneeded param. Like radon...not needed to factor radon gas permeability in sw

measuring nitrite might be handy in medication tanks, to assess impacts on surface area

all reef tank conventions that start 400 reefs on the same date: not factoring nitrite or they couldn’t begin on time. Only ammonia control and surface area matters in updated cycling practice

toss in some bioload, few snails. They’ll live.
do a nice water change first, we do that at the end of cycles to rid algae fuel. I’d offer to intro fish as the ultimate proof of can start, but that’s advocating skipping fallow to prove something already being applied across the board.

 

[brandon429]

a weeks wait covers all start dates, you can plan ANY start date on the 7th day/convention skip cycle etc. nearly all bottle bac is instant, no wait ammonia control (hence 5500 fish-in starts where fish are NOT ammonia burned)
_______________________________________________________


your tank has demo’d ammonia control for over a week. It’s got excellent, surface area of the highest quality.
you could drain your whole system empty until this evening, refill it, and it will still move ammonia down overnite, it’s that locked in (ammonia control)

we have drain duration studies to check desiccation in cycled rocks. They’re amazing. my whole reef routinely is drained for extended air contact testing, corals included. your tank can endure right now what I’ve been putting my reef through for ten years.

 

[TheBryFry]

So my conclusion to this, is to look somewhere else as the cause of my degradation of coral health. I certainly appreciate the feedback!

 

[brandon429]

for sure.


not related to any aspect of cycle with such great rock, depth of sand.

we regenerate corals all the time just by spot feeding. sustained, above norm, held for 6 weeks or so. it works in every case I can recall: human driving food in/quick few gallons water change out about 2 hours later.

low work, high frequency. sustained 6 weeks. that's increasing export, of any irritants.

thats increasing detritus removal as you spot lift a few gallons here and there, increasing o2

its injecting protein directly into corals, if you'll aim well enough.

it slowly transitions any questionable chem issues you have in that tank, of low demand, into what matches a bag of change salt.

in every way we think sustained changed action by the reefer, then back to norm after six weeks, is coral bodybuilding. we dont think its param related much at all.

 

[brandon429]

Can we have an update here, we are tracking false positive nitrite readings tanks