Q tank ammonia spikes.

[JessKaye]

Hi everyone,

A friend of a friend recently shut down their tank due to a leak so I decided to take on an adult clownfish pair and 3 blue green chromis. I set up a 90L tote for the clowns and a 52L tote for the chromis and added a large piece of live rock from my main tank into each (about 1.5kg each) and then a sponge filter in both, the sponge had been in my canister. But every 24 hours I’m getting 0.5ppm ammonia building up. Ive been doing daily large water changes (about 50%, maybe a tad more). But still getting to same reading next day.

Any advice on making this sustainable? Daily water changes is going to be exhausting (and expensive!). Do I give up on the q tanks and take the risk of adding them? How do people run q tanks without this headache?

Thanks :) Jess

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

You did not mention a powerhead? There must be water movement, it shouldn't be stagnant.

I'm also not sure how much filtration one rock can handle until the rest of the tote cycles, I would feed sparingly and I might add more rock.

 

[JessKaye]

You did not mention a powerhead? There must be water movement, it shouldn't be stagnant.

I'm also not sure how much filtration one rock can handle until the rest of the tote cycles, I would feed sparingly and I might add more rock.

Sorry of course there is a heater and water movement in both tanks, sorry I specifically was focusing on the issue at hand and forgot to mention those!

 

[martin.a]

I had a similar problem with two 80L q-tanks. Both were started with media cured in display's sump, and both struggled with ammonia for first 3 weeks. Not as dramatically perhaps, under 0.2 ppm total ammonia, but still I was a bit surprised and worried. I was emergency dosing ReefAlicious Live Bacteria which was helping for a short time and needed daily dosing.

Someone on R2R said that whatever you do a tank needs 3 weeks to cycle and settle. Probably a generalization, but I am going to follow this advise next time.