Low levels of Ammonia, I can’t shake.

[zatchyvsalt]

Hey fellow reefers.

Newish to the hobby and loving every minute of it. Even the challenges. Now I have a challenge I can’t seem to get a grasp on so I’ll explain in vivid detail.

I have a 75 gal salt water aquarium that has been up and running for about 9ish months. I did the cycling process and waited about 2 months before I put any fish in the tank. Levels were 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 10 nitrate. I started with 2 clowns and a powder blue tang (very small at the moment). And before anyone bites my head off, I have a 250gal Red Sea tank on order for November delivery, so I’m prepared. I then bought a melanurus wrasse about 3 weeks later. Unfortunately about a week later the wrasse was found dead. I took a sample to my LFS and there was a severe spike in ammonia and nitrite. I did about a 70% water change to combat the levels. Turns out my 5 year old severely over fed the tank. (Won’t happen again)

To this day all the fish in my tank are listed as, 2 clown, 1 powered blue tag, 1 red hawk fish, 1 royal gramma, 4 cardinals, 1 lawn mower, 1 mandarin dragonet (eating fine), a fairy wrasse, and a small Niger Trigger (also going to 250gal in November) with that I also have 2 bubble tip nems and about 6 corals and some hermit crabs and snails. They all seem to be doing great and eating well.

My setup is about 50 pounds of live rock and 60 pounds of live sand. I use the seachem tidal 75 as my hang on filter which did not seem to do the best job so I added a Penn Plac Cascade 1000 canister filter. My tank is now crystal clear. With those I have 2 Redsea LED 90 and a Red Sea Wave 45.

Now my only issue is I cant seem to shake this ammonia that won’t drop to zero. It’s steady at about .025 to .05 and never gets to undetectable amounts. Nitrite is 0 and Nitrate is about 10. It doesn’t seem to stress the fish but I want to make sure there isn’t something else I should be doing. I do about 20% water change a week and keep up with maintenance on my filters.

Please let me know what can be done.

Thanks for reading.

Attached are some picks of the tank as well as my light schedule. Any tips would be appreciated

 

[Timfish]

You didn't mention which test kits you're using. If you're using APIs ammonia get another brand. I would suggest when you get a new test kit to always compare it to your old kit to see if there's been any aging with the older reagents that may have given incorrect numbers. For this reason I'll occasionally compare test kits also.

Here's what I use but my advice is get with other reef aquarists and try their test kits to see what you find easiest to use.

API - pH and ALkalinity (KH)
Nyos - PO4 and nitrate
Elos - PO4
Red Sea - Nitrate and PO4
Salifert - Magnesium

And I'll occasionally send off samples for ATI ICP and Aquabiomics microbiome

FWIW, I've tried Hanna and prefer the above brands for PO4. I got thier ALkalinity and checked it against a firends, using bothe reagents in both testers we got four different results varing by .9dKH. API alkalinity is more consistant based on my comparisons and cheaper. But researchers are primarily using the meq/l standard for testing alkalinity and it's considerably less sensitive than the dKH standard so if you like Hanna's tester it's going to be a lot more sensitive than the meq/l standard. A really good expanation of the diffrence between accuracy and sensitivity in testing in section 5) part of RIchard Ross' article on ICP testing.

 

[brandon429]

you dont need to test ammonia in a tank that old, it's not zero in aged running reef tanks = new cycling science

old, incorrect cycling science told you it had to be zero. your cycle is now fixed

 

[brandon429]

ammonia can't ever be out of spec in a normally running reef tank as long as fish aren't dead and littered about/rotting. if that happens, ammonia was not the cause it was disease, hardware issues or other user design errors but never ammonia, that's self-handling in reef displays at this age. = new cycling science.

if you permanently cease testing for ammonia in this display and focus on fish disease prevention instead, quarantine and fallow, your headaches will stop involving cycle issues.

 

[Dan_P]

Hey fellow reefers.

Newish to the hobby and loving every minute of it. Even the challenges. Now I have a challenge I can’t seem to get a grasp on so I’ll explain in vivid detail.

I have a 75 gal salt water aquarium that has been up and running for about 9ish months. I did the cycling process and waited about 2 months before I put any fish in the tank. Levels were 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 10 nitrate. I started with 2 clowns and a powder blue tang (very small at the moment). And before anyone bites my head off, I have a 250gal Red Sea tank on order for November delivery, so I’m prepared. I then bought a melanurus wrasse about 3 weeks later. Unfortunately about a week later the wrasse was found dead. I took a sample to my LFS and there was a severe spike in ammonia and nitrite. I did about a 70% water change to combat the levels. Turns out my 5 year old severely over fed the tank. (Won’t happen again)

To this day all the fish in my tank are listed as, 2 clown, 1 powered blue tag, 1 red hawk fish, 1 royal gramma, 4 cardinals, 1 lawn mower, 1 mandarin dragonet (eating fine), a fairy wrasse, and a small Niger Trigger (also going to 250gal in November) with that I also have 2 bubble tip nems and about 6 corals and some hermit crabs and snails. They all seem to be doing great and eating well.

My setup is about 50 pounds of live rock and 60 pounds of live sand. I use the seachem tidal 75 as my hang on filter which did not seem to do the best job so I added a Penn Plac Cascade 1000 canister filter. My tank is now crystal clear. With those I have 2 Redsea LED 90 and a Red Sea Wave 45.

Now my only issue is I cant seem to shake this ammonia that won’t drop to zero. It’s steady at about .025 to .05 and never gets to undetectable amounts. Nitrite is 0 and Nitrate is about 10. It doesn’t seem to stress the fish but I want to make sure there isn’t something else I should be doing. I do about 20% water change a week and keep up with maintenance on my filters.

Please let me know what can be done.

Thanks for reading.

Attached are some picks of the tank as well as my light schedule. Any tips would be appreciated

The test results you obtained are for total ammonia I assume. Free ammonia makes up very roughly 10% of that number. The aquarium inhabitants are not in any danger.

There is also a possibility that those numbers represent 0 ppm total ammonia because some other amine containing organic molecule is interfering with the test. If you are stilled worried, put a Seachem Alert ammonia tester in the aquarium.

 

[Seansea]

Ya i wouldnt worry about ammonia at this stage unless there was an incident like a 5yr old overfeeding tank.

What i would worry about is algae explosion with those lights and a hob filter. Some kind of hob fuge or ats might help curb that possibility as well as assure you ammonia problem is solved

Nice shimmer with those lights. What are they? Red sea?

 

[zatchyvsalt]

Ya i wouldnt worry about ammonia at this stage unless there was an incident like a 5yr old overfeeding tank.

What i would worry about is algae explosion with those lights and a hob filter. Some kind of hob fuge or ats might help curb that possibility as well as assure you ammonia problem is solved

Nice shimmer with those lights. What are they? Red sea?

 

[zatchyvsalt]

Yes they are Red Sea. I do have a little bit of a Diatom issue but it seems to be under control.