Moved tank, crashed cycle, HELP!

[Klyle]

I moved my tank to the living room this weekend, have high levels of ammonia now. I dosed prime, began mixing water, and flew to my LFS for some dr tims... how long should I let my salt mix? I don't want to dose the dr tims until I do a wc so I don't toss it down the drain. I use Tropic marin pro, should I wait just until it's clear or overnight? Being that the prime binds ammonia will it buy me some time?

 

[CMMorgan]

You probably stirred up your sand and all of the horrors held within. I'd let is mix for an hour or so and go for it. That should give you a good read on salinity without precipitation.
May be a good plan to vacuum that sand bad while you are at it.

 

[Doctorgori]

yep, I’d wait till it clears

 

[Garf]

Perhaps your test kit is picking up the dirt in the water. Try settling some in a beaker, filter with a coffee filter or something then test the clear stuff.

 

[Klyle]

I moved my tank to the living room this weekend, have high levels of ammonia now. I dosed prime, began mixing water, and flew to my LFS for some dr tims... how long should I let my salt mix? I don't want to dose the dr tims until I do a wc so I don't toss it down the drain. I use Tropic marin pro, should I wait just until it's clear or overnight? Being that the prime binds ammonia will it buy me some time?

I threw away the old sand, used new Caribsea I thought I had enough marine pure to back it up. Guess not! I'm with u though, I'm gonna do the wc soon

 

[MabuyaQ]

When you threw out the sand, you also threw out all the bacteria living in/on it. Given the surface area sand provides you most likely threw away the best and largest part of you bacterial filtration system processing the ammonia your fish produce.

Be mindfull (when doing the waterchange) of your pH as this determines the toxicity of the ammonia. Also be aware that products like prime don't remove ammonia, they only sequester it in a non toxic form and will release it over time for bacteria to proces, without sufficent bacteria ammonia could still spike..

 

[brandon429]

I dont believe the test kits, since you haven’t reported a single loss.

post tank pic

agreed moving unrinsed sand isn’t good, but that self resolves in an hour or so if you have seneye, two weeks later if you’re on red sea, salifert or api

a cycle issue on a matured system isn’t determined by a color tube test kit, it’s by a tank pic. Prime now makes false positive readings in circular motion, I bet zero cycle happened or the tank would be wiped. Bet it’s minor bump, down in an hour a while ago, test kits report any metabolites as free ammonia.

 

[Klyle]

Once I stabilize my alk I will test my ph. What do I do if there is a discrepancy? Here are a couple of pics. The fish seem ok. All corals are closed. I'm thinking 50% wc?

 

[Garf]

You should have plenty of surface area on them rocks to process ammonia.

 

[Klyle]

Agreed but I tested ammonia with api kit yesterday and it read 0. Today it was dark green...not sure the exact number that correlates to but that is high! At this point, I wonder if a large wc will do more harm than good...I have the 240ml bottle of dr tims that treats 120g, my system is only 60g. Should I just use that now, wc tomorrow or what?

 

[Garf]

Im guessing you picked up a bit of crud in your sample. Have you retested?

 

[Klyle]

I just did. It's sky high. I did dose 10 ml of prime about 4 hrs ago in a panic. Not sure how it affects the reading.

 

[brandon429]

Here’s the exact situation, you have no free ammonia we can see by the fish and water clarity. All the stuff added is mildly changed from prior condition plus the moving mud, so corals might be mad agreed but not dying

That much rock, sand, motion and dilution will eat up the sandbed ammonia if any within one hour seneye threads show, when they’re literally adding ammonia to a live reef and watching it go down accurately


add nothing more, test nothing more just the water change, easy fix here. The tank is not crashed and the nh3 is fine now.

the tests you are using have a massive long lag time to report accurately, and now they can’t with prime added. Water change, all is well, alk has no bearing here and the water changes will be ideal. It never did recycle. It mildly upwelled waste, a brief spike like an over feeding event, and you don’t have the right test kits to register the nh3 portion of total ammonia accurately but reefs control nh3 just fine, it’s why your pics are normal and only kits caused the alarm

 

[Klyle]

Sounds good to me! I'll probably toss in the dr tims since I've already bought it. I'll get my levels stable, do a wc, and chill out. Thanks everyone!

 

[Garf]

I’ve got something niggling in the back of my mind that sais Prime interferes with ammonia test kits, but I have no idea where I got that from.
Edit - perhaps the niggle is just that some ammonia is just bound up and non testable. Maybe.

 

[brandon429]

You don’t need it, return it if possible

if anything that competes for oxygen, unnecessarily, in a system that simply needs to be evaluated without a test kit tomorrow after a water change tonite. The specific recommendation is add nothing, test nothing, do water change, with no customization of the offer. That’s the specific remedy for your issue.

 

[Klyle]

I've heard by that also but I was reading 4ppm ammonia before I dosed the prime. I only have that for my freshwater tank. At this point I think a decent wc and dr tims is my best bet

 

[Klyle]

Makes sense. Ok sir! Will do.

 

[CMMorgan]

+1 @Brando650

 

[brandon429]

This is going in our false ammonia read thread, Reef called it.