Nitrate/Nitrite/Ammonia Issues

[brandon429]

What you keep dosing causes false reads


your ammonia is fine


consider the ammonia alert thread posted it has invaluable work and pattern


that anemone would never open in free ammonia water


skipping all fish disease preps is your fish loss issue.

They ignore the other animals doing fine like inverts, that would not be open in free ammonia water.


expect nearly all fish you add to die within months unless you redo the disease protocol shown as well. No matter how much you want there to be an ammonia problem, we linked in the example thread a sub thread with twenty pages showing what reefs do when we add actual free ammonia into them. They’re using digital seneye meters, thats why they dont have false ammonia alerts

 

[Rmckoy]

Ammonia shouldn't be showing up if the tank is cycled. What test are you using and what was the reading? Being a brand new tank may want to consider returning the anemone. They need a mature tank with stable parameters.

Curious how there would be high nitrates suggesting the cycle is complete ,
But high ammonia as well other than the biological filtration not being enough to sustain the new addition of 2 fish and a anemone .

 

[brandon429]

Thread example summary

why you don’t have free ammonia

Sustained Ammonia spikes are misreads

The reason you think your reef tank can’t control its ammonia is due to false training from old cycling science. That and you don’t own a seneye on the tank in question: if you did, you wouldn’t ever think your ammonia was out of control...

www.reef2reef.com

what tanks that actually have free ammonia dosed, on seneye, show and how fast they render the dose neutral (five mins, no reef leaves unused free ammonia out of the thousandths ppm, your tests can’t register that level)

Does anyone dose ammonia and/or how would one try?

I found a bottle of ammonium hydroxide from the supermarket but it doesn't tell the strength. From a little research I'm finding that most household solutions are 3%. (I'm hoping this is a safe guess!). I'd like to ask for someone to confirm my math: 3% = 30mg/ml. Tank vol = 150 L I...

www.reef2reef.com

why your fish are dying

Fish Disease Treatment and Diagnosis

A forum for discussing treatment and diagnosing saltwater reef fish.

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Lasse]

Skip the light fandango - the light it the less important for the moment. I agree with the people arguing that you have an ammonia toxification going on. Nitrite is not toxic in a saltwater environment because the high content of chloride ions - however an indication that the cycle is not working properly. See here and here.

If you read nitrite - you can´t trust the reading of nitrate because nitrite in the water gives a false reading of nitrate, It is also shown in the two links above.

In this case - the problem is your ammonia concentration and your pH. Ammonia as we use to call it is in real life two different species - ammonium (NH4) and ammoniac (NH3) Ammonium (NH4) is total harmless but ammoniac (NH3) is highly toxic. I every given moment - pH determines the relative levels of these two. Below 7 - NH4 dominate with more than 99,99 % of the total NH4/NH3 complex. At pH 8 - around 5 % is NH3 and 95 % NH4. The API test reads the total amount of NH4/NH3 and this little tool can help you to calculate the real total concentration of the toxic species NH3

What´s to do in your case - you need to get the total ammonia down and WC and no feeding are your tools. A daily WC until total ammonia is down under 1 is needed. You should also ad some pure nitrification bacteria like DrTim's Aquatics Reef One & Only Nitrifying Bacteria. If other brands - look for nitrospira. If you have difficult to get bottled bacteria - read this thread for more ideas. One thing not mentioned there is to go out in the nature and pick a handful of unfertilized soil from the upper 15 cm. Mix in a bucket of water (tap works - RO works too) and filter trough a coffee filter. Then place the filtrate in the refrigerator and pour in a little in the aquarium every day for three weeks.

There is no doubt - IMO - you have a NH3 problem - even if most total ammonia tests normally show too high values - but that is only valid IMO for measurements below 1 ppm and normally they show 0.25 when it is 0. And 0.25 is of no harm even if you have a high pH.

Sincerely Lasse