Hello I’m writing this in distress if you have 10 minutes please help… since I could remember I’ve had fresh water fish and for years I’ve wanted a salt water tank to add to my collection so I finally pulled the trigger and bought a 35 gallon tank with a canister filter heater and backup heater wave maker (actual wave maker not a water pump) live sand, live rock etc… everything needed for salt water fish then after I got everything for the tank I went with a RODI water filter because it seemed like a decent investment instead of buying a gallon for 2.50$ so I did bought the RODI filter salt, dechlorinator by Seachem , quick start from api, api test kit even a bottle of magnesium to help any corals I put in to the tank so I cycled the tank for a about a week and half ( I know it’s a short time) when I first added water to the tank I made sure to throw some quick start and before I added the fish I also added a bit of quick start tested my water for any ammonia came back 0 so tested ph, phosphate, nitrite and all levels matched out even took it to my local sea escape store for further testing they approved I was super excited picked up a pair of clown fish 1 tiny coral and a small goby everything seemed great for the first 3 days 4th day the clown fish end up dead I watched a movie the night before till 2 am and checked on them before going to bed they looked happy i was in love with the tank but unfortunately my girlfriend woke me up telling me the clown fish are died even though I was bummed out I knew it was part of the learning process I saved the goby and took it back to the store with the coral to give them another chance even though they looked perfectly fine even the coral was opened up I just wanted to stop any casualties from happening (keep in mind on the 3rd day the movie night day I tested the water around 7 pm everything checked out) so I went back home tested me water the only thing that was off was the ph bit a slight bit within .4 but ammonia was around .35 so did a water change around 25% and that was 5 days ago the same day I took back the fish to the store so with the water change I would hopefully neutralize the ammonia a little bit (even cleaned out canister filter siphoned the sand cleaned glass etc…) also added ammo lock by API before adding new dechlorinised water with a bit of quick start and boom absolutely nothing changed if anything ammonia spiked OVER .50 after the new water with ammonlock dechlorinator, so that was 5 days ago since then I have been trying to neutralize ammonia but every single day there seems to be .50 ammonia I’ve changed 25 percent of the water 2 TIMES IN THE LAST 5 days to try and bring it down but no luck I did a water change today but still at .50 I plan on doing another big water change tomorrow but does anyone know why my ammonia isn’t going down?? The only time it goes down is when I add ammo lock for around a day it neutralizes it to 0 but then goes right back should I add the ammo lock and then add some time of fish to help the filter build bacteria?? Do I even need fish to neutralize ammonia?? When I had no fish there was no ammonia so why is there now?? With no fish, There is absolutely nothing in the tank except the live sand and rock I’m very frustrated just ordered a ammonia eliminator by fluval getting here in the morning please I’m very tired, upset and discouraged I spent to much money for me not to make it work I’m new to the salt water world that’s why I’m making this post if anyone can contact me I could probably explain the story a lot better it’s currently 1 am exhausted after doing so much research but it seems I’m doing everything right…
