Is it normal for ammonia to be .25ppm 1 week into cycle with clowns?

[Saltyreef]

Well, I believe my ammonia is truly at .25 because I decided to test some water straight out of a jug of purified water to see what color it would be and it was as yellow as the yellow on the card. It was just as yellow as my nitrates usually look. I think this would be a good test for anyone to do that is wondering if their api test are accurate or not.

The marine kits are meant for accuracy in seawater. Unless you have a freshwater kit.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Well, I believe my ammonia is truly at .25 because I decided to test some water straight out of a jug of purified water to see what color it would be and it was as yellow as the yellow on the card. It was just as yellow as my nitrates usually look. I think this would be a good test for anyone to do that is wondering if their api test are accurate or not.

Before you trust these results, take a water sample to a store that does NOT use Api kits and have them test your ammonia and nitrates and compare readings- then you'll know where your levels truly are at

 

[Zizzer]

You're right. The api kit I am using is for marine/saltwater and The water I was using to test the accuracy was fresh water. Thank you for catching my mistake.

Before you trust these results, take a water sample to a store that does NOT use Api kits and have them test your ammonia and nitrates and compare readings- then you'll know where your levels truly are at

 

[brandon429]

You shouldn’t add any more fish because all disease preps are being skipped, not because your cycle is of concern

 

[Zizzer]

I have to admit. I do not know anything about preping for that. Nor have I read anything about doing that as a preventive. But, there's a lot I don't know. is that something you do every time you add a coral or fish? And if so, would they not be like a chance of over dose of drugs on all the medicines I give them every time I add something new or is it more like vitamins? I guess I'll have to look into that. Is there a good link you could send me.

 

[Zizzer]

You shouldn’t add any more fish because all disease preps are being skipped, not because your cycle is of concern

Seems like i would have to have a quarantine tank to do any kind of prevention. I just started this tank and buying another tank anytime soon is going to be out of the question. I also have a wife to answer to and that would just be a resounding no. I'll just have to trust that the store will do that before selling them to me. At least until my tank gets more established, mature, and expensive.

 

[exnisstech]

patience is something you either got or you don't. Unfortunately, I'm broke in that department. But, I'm trying

It will come or bad things will happen I normally have the patience of a gnat but have developed patience with the tanks finally. Impatience typically leads to frustration and failure in this hobby.

 

[brandon429]

Fish Disease Treatment and Diagnosis

A forum for discussing treatment and diagnosing saltwater reef fish.

www.reef2reef.com

for all fish disease details, must complete a 3 day self-guided study there consisting of reading each sticky plus a handful of diagnosis threads from the posts on page 1, to get a big picture. the basic summary is adding anything from a pet store to your tank without preps is likely to kill the fish a few months later via disease import; the steps for prep are the basis of the study but that's a fine source and free, the most updated info around ran by a zookeeper aquarist scientist / Jay

 

[Zizzer]

Fish Disease Treatment and Diagnosis

A forum for discussing treatment and diagnosing saltwater reef fish.

www.reef2reef.com

for all fish disease details, must complete a 3 day self-guided study there consisting of reading each sticky plus a handful of diagnosis threads from the posts on page 1, to get a big picture. the basic summary is adding anything from a pet store to your tank without preps is likely to kill the fish a few months later via disease import; the steps for prep are the basis of the study but that's a fine source and free, the most updated info around ran by a zookeeper aquarist scientist / Jay

Ouch! 1063 pages of discussions. Can I just get a bottle of fix-all. But for real though. The link is helpful. I'll look at it when I get some time or when I'm up all night obsessed about learning more about this stuff.

 

[Zizzer]

Lasse gave some valuable advice on these types of cycles worth relaying: the food you add is more loading press than the actual fish

this next week needs to be very low feed rate, lower than normal, to shore up any risks. do a couple decent water changes in the interim simply matching temp and salinity, but no more testing is needed. change 20% or so of the water a couple of times/easy guiding here.

I did a couple 10% water changes and vacuumed my gravel once. I took my water down to the pet store and they gave me all my test results. Which were not the same as my api test kit. They were showing my nitrites are at .2 and ammonia is at .2 and nitrates are still 0.0. I don't think I am cycled yet or reefing as someone called it. These api test suck in my opinion. My api was showing .3ish on ammonia, 0 on nitrites and 5 to 10ish on nitrates. Made me think I was cycled and needed to do another water change. Pet store said they use a $900 test kit so I assume their's is way more accurate than mine. Does anyone else not have an issue with these api test because the reviews were high and I don't see how.

 

[OnePuffMan]

I'm in the same boat, but with a 150 gallon (185 total). I had my tank running for 2 weeks, added bottle bac last week with 2 clowns. API has gone between yellow and light green with no spikes. They fish are happy, just too dumb to find their food.

I have a Foxface that was in quarantine with them, but I will probably give one more week before adding him. @brandon429 please feel free to tell me if I am being too cautious or about to do something stupid. I've been basing a lot of this on your advice (though I don't hold you responsible )

 

[brandon429]

hey lets see pics of your system housing those fish, we get all our diagnostics on cycle stuff from pics, not from test kit approximations

 

[OnePuffMan]

hey lets see pics of your system housing those fish, we get all our diagnostics on cycle stuff from pics, not from test kit approximations

Here you go!

 

[Idech]

They fish are happy, just too dumb to find their food.

They’re not dumb; the way we feed is just not how they would find food in the wild. It’s your job to teach them what food is in your environment and help them adapt.

 

[OnePuffMan]

They’re not dumb; the way we feed is just not how they would find food in the wild. It’s your job to teach them what food is in your environment and help them adapt.

It's a joke. I'm working on conditioning them to the new environment. It's just taking a little bit.

 

[Zizzer]

When I got home from the pet store after week 2, I did another nitrite test with the api and could see a very small hint of purplish color. Closer to the blue than the purple but it was there. I waited one more week and couldn't help myself. At the end of week 3, my nitrates looked about 5 or 10, and nitrites looked the same as week 2 and ammonia looked like it had from day 1. The guy at the pet store told me, with absolute certainly, that the api test are close enough to go by when adding fish. Even though he said I should wait until 30 days to add another fish, I couldn't wait. I added a yellow watchman goby paired with a pistol shrimp and 2 Halloween hermits. One of the hermits hasn't moved since I brought it home but the other hermit is all over the tank. The pistol shrimp doesn't stop digging holes for for goby and they are as happy as can be. I will say that after not seeing one of the hermits sit in one spot for about a day, I added a little buffer to bring my ph up from 7.9 to 8.3 because I read that they need their ph between 8.1 and 8.4. However, he still hasn't moved. But, the other 3 tankmates are very active. I've been watching my normal levels and everything still seems stable as of last night. This Thursday will be week 4. In my opinion, once you see evidence of nitrates, I would assume that your tank has gone through the cycle. I'm not a very cautious person but I'm not extremely careless either. I believe that your tank is so big, that you may see less of a color difference in your testing than I did. I also believe that the bio load is going to be very small with only 2 clowns. I wouldn't think it would be too risky to add him if your reading next to 0 on everything. Ammonia always says .25 from my understanding. But, if a 50 gallon tank can handle an additional fish at the end of week 3, I think a 180 can very much handle it. I mean, bacteria needs something to eat. They like Ammonia. Fish make Ammonia.

 

[Zizzer]

Well, clowns and flame angel got sick with something and died. Clown got white fuzzy stuff on it and then flame started attacking it. Then the flame got whatever the clowns had. I set up a qt tank and ordered all of seachem medicines but fish were dead the day after medicine arrived. Only fish that made it through treatment was the yellow watchman goby that never really looked sick to begin with.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

I am sorry for the fish that died in only one month, their life expectancy is longer than that. As other have mentioned previously in this thread, better to be patient and go slow in this hobby.

Now it should be assumed that your tank is contaminated with disease and should be fallow for a few months, compared to waiting just 2-3 weeks to cycle the tank without fish and stock it slowly, the outcome might have been different for the fish.

 

[Zizzer]

I am sorry for the fish that died in only one month, their life expectancy is longer than that. As other have mentioned previously in this thread, better to be patient and go slow in this hobby.

Now it should be assumed that your tank is contaminated with disease and should be fallow for a few months, compared to waiting just 2-3 weeks to cycle the tank without fish and stock it slowly, the outcome might have been different for the fish.

Yeah, I know. I am very disappointed in the outcome. I just didn't want anyone in the future to follow my thread and think that everything went well. It was an expensive nightmare running out to buy a qt tank and medicine. Not to mention having to do everything quickly and acclimating all the fish to the new tank during my off time from work. Only to slowly watch them die while waiting for the medicine to come in the mail. I still have all my corals, snails, shrimps, crabs and goby. It is better to have patients. I am now just waiting and watching.

 

[KrisReef]

@Zizzer
Mind if I call you Zzz's ?

Welcome to Reef2Reef!
I wanted to say thanks for posting a reply so others could follow and learn from it.

I am sad to report that no matter how much we try to warn those who follow the vast majority of us (me 2) have experienced these same things when starting out in the hobby. A few folks may not go this route but the vast majority of us seem to be headed down the exact same path when we start our salt water experiment.

Thanks again for the follow-up. Sorry that the fish came home with a health issue. BTW, fish aggression in our small tanks (150 gallons isn't a drop out of the ocean) is synegistic with disease vectors and your goby was busy hidding under a rock while the clowns and angel fought for dominance of the tide pool which allowed him to become the victor after the fighting ended.
Going forward, I would/might add a chunk of liverock now and then make a fish list (and corals?) so you can plan what fishes you are going to get and add them in an order that makes sense. Aggressive, territorial fishes are often the last fish you add in planned tanks. Otherwise, some people add all the fish at once to prevent territorial battles that happen once a fish has found and claimed its space.

Welcome to Reef2Reef.