Should I test for ammonia after bioload increase?

[reef_1]

Imo it does not only depend on new fish added, but also/rather on the increased feeding.

If you add new fish AND you massively increase feeding compared to what you fed before AND your biofilter was at its limits, then it shows up quite fast, in a day or so and can still go up on the second day.

As you did a much better job with cycling than me ever and your tank is quite big I am not sure what you should see, maybe nothing at all.

But I think there is absolutely no harm in testing it. I actually like to continously monitor it with a 7$ seachem ammonia badge, so I do not even have to do anything to test it, just move my eyeballs and process the incoming photons.

If you dont test now when tank is new and you still add fish and then you dont test cuz tank is old, then when you will use your test kit?

Measure it.

 

[brandon429]

Feel free to post any updates over time here, Im subbed I’ll watch for the measures as time goes by


pretty much nobody else would care lol, there isn’t much reward for updating but we will use the information to evolve massive tank cycling threads where we fix cycle issues

we= friends, like Cell, or LRT, or others who apply updated cycling science in cycle challenge posts.




currently, as motivated by non digital testing, bottle bac companies make a killing on redundant extra sales of bottle bacteria for cycling. I’ve collected about 200+ examples of posts where a failed ammonia test caused a new bottle of bac sold (failed test was non digital)


the advent of digital accurate testing is going to suppress a portion of the bottle bac sales market, due to less flinch response purchases.

We don’t see many if any seneye owners reacting in fear to an ammonia reading, even with a dead tang rotting in the rocks unreachable (seen in one of our example posts) ammonia did not move past .007 ppm nh3

this all ties into your original thread title, why we don’t have to test (but given the rarity of your meter, it’s a welcomed test)

 

[TWYOUNG]

That is exactly what a seneye would run

Given your tank age, bioload, surface area (we haven't seen pics yet but a reef is a reef) that reading calibrates your hanna to be used on all kinds of cycling experiments, including biofilter stress tests. Anything you want to log and relate to changes made in the tank, sand cleaning events, big water changes, will really benefit the hobby.

With that meter you'll be able to see how quickly other systems cycle up, you'll be able to watch your own system ensure challenge events just shy of a big fish loss without any issues exactly like an ammonia shock absorber system


If it helps to know, Dr Tim discussed in posts a few times now that adding new bioload doesn't mean more bacteria form; current ones simply go into a faster metabolic production mode and its in instant response to + new bioload

There is of course a tipping point for any reef; in the ratios we all copy we don't have to worry about approaching that tipping point and you are among the rare folks with the meter to verify that ability.

Here's a pic of my tank and filter setup since you inquired. Sorry for the blue tank I haven't really figured out how to customize my lighting yet, especially not for pics. I don't plan on adding any corals for several months so I've got time to figure it out.

 

[brandon429]

My gosh that’s a pro setup. With pro supports not a joke. Here in my town there’s a large public display reef at a place called the omni max

Ive seen behind the scenes there multiple times, it looks like random pasta wiring and hoses with salt creep / at least it did a few years ago lol

that above looks like how you’d wire amps in a fine car audio display and delivery wiring.

the surface area is really keen, directly in mid flow path. I expect your meter to show variance over time as bioload increases but I / we don’t know what to state is the acceptable high top end.
that degree of display surface area has been seen in threads running both heavy and light fish stocked tanks.

Your kit likely states an acceptable top end, but we don’t know the overall accuracy at work until we get more readings matched to pics that help us gauge the ability of these ratios we all copy.

.19 logged by MRSW was rightfully dismissed in his review video as no big deal.

but bump that reading up a mere .01

and now you’re at .2 nh4 which is the read level Red Sea did in one of my threads to cause sheer panic for nine straight pages across twenty reefs (false ammonia stall thread)


im concerned this meter per Mr SW is only .001 away from a series of hardcore misreads that tricked a lot of folks into false stall fear, the stuff mentioned on page one.

your reading matches seneye very closely / thousandths ppm nh3 levels vs hundredths

people who like cycling science want to know if reef displays run tight in ammonia control across tanks, or if ammonia control ranges wildly with stocking levels.

 

[TWYOUNG]

My gosh that’s a pro setup. With pro supports not a joke. Here in my town there’s a large public display reef at a place called the omni max

Ive seen behind the scenes there multiple times, it looks like random pasta wiring and hoses with salt creep / at least it did a few years ago lol

that above looks like how you’d wire amps in a fine car audio display and delivery wiring.

the surface area is really keen, directly in mid flow path. I expect your meter to show variance over time as bioload increases but I / we don’t know what to state is the acceptable high top end.
that degree of display surface area has been seen in threads running both heavy and light fish stocked tanks.

Your kit likely states an acceptable top end, but we don’t know the overall accuracy at work until we get more readings matched to pics that help us gauge the ability of these ratios we all copy.

.19 logged by MRSW was rightfully dismissed in his review video as no big deal.

but bump that reading up a mere .01

and now you’re at .2 nh4 which is the read level Red Sea did in one of my threads to cause sheer panic for nine straight pages across twenty reefs (false ammonia stall thread)


im concerned this meter per Mr SW is only .001 away from a series of hardcore misreads that tricked a lot of folks into false stall fear, the stuff mentioned on page one.

your reading matches seneye very closely / thousandths ppm nh3 levels vs hundredths

people who like cycling science want to know if reef displays run tight in ammonia control across tanks, or if ammonia control ranges wildly with stocking levels.

Thanks, I've got some OCD issues lol. Most would say I took the rock too high on the left side as it nearly reaches the surface and I may need to break the top off at some point. I like the rock look though and I'm not optimistic enough to expect I'm going to be able to fill this tank chock full of thriving corals.

 

[Dan_P]

150 gal. 100 lbs CaribSea LifeRock, 80 lbs AragAlive sand. Turbo 900 x2, Nitrocycle until ammonia registered zero then re-dosed it once or twice until ammonia could be eliminated in 2-3 days after dosed up to 1.0 ppm. , and nitrites negative. Immediately added pods and a few small fish. Dosing phyto daily and pods doing well. Phosphates have always been 0.0 and nitrates have fallen from 11 to 0.0 over the past couple of weeks despite heavy feeding. Started adding Tropic Marin Plus-NP last week with no change yet. Sorry for the long post but you promised a long thoughtful response so I wanted to make sure you had plenty of details to work with. Thanks so much.

Thanks for information!

Most aquarists don’t test for ammonia because they feel that their systems consume much more ammonia then their planned stock additions would generate, and this is probably true. Besides a large nitrifying system, another bit of insurance is that the total ammonia generated by a new fish addition is mostly the less toxic ammonium ion. The amount of the toxic unionized ammonia depends on the pH and temperature and is approximately 5-10% of the total ammonia measured by our test kits. Even if total ammonia were to temporarily rise with a new fish addition, an increase in the unionized ammonia could be small, not a spike, and it would not last long. You saw how quickly 1 ppm disappeared with your ammonia additions (that is why I asked). None of this tells you the right thing to do but it will let you sleep at night.

But let’s say you want to be doubly sure ammonia is under control while you add fish. Do what has been suggested, hang a Seachem ammonia detection card in your system. This device changes color fairly quickly in response to the presence of free ammonia. Before doing that, ask yourself “what am I going to do if the card indicates >0.02 ppm or 0.05 ppm?“ Have on hand whatever you want. Salt for a water change or a bottle of nitrifying bacteria to boost your system‘s nitrifying capability, otherwise, you may find yourself scrambling to buy something to put into the aquarium. Also ask yourself whether it is necessary to respond to the elevated ammonia or just let the nitrifying bacteria remove the ammonia. I imagine very few people if any do this sort of thing except for their quarantine tank.

The other thing you could do to convince yourself that you are not overdoing the fish addition is to estimate ammonia generation in your system. This is done by calculating the amount of protein you feed your fish every day. This information is easy to find on a package of commercial foods. Based on the total mg of food added calculate the protein added. The amount of ammonia generated is estimated by multiplying the amount of protein by 0.16 (protein is roughly 16% nitrogen) and multiply that result by 18/14 (the conversion on the mass of nitrogen to ammonium ). This rough estimate will let you know if you are way over the capability of your nitrifying bacteria to remove ammonia quickly.

Good luck.

 

[TWYOUNG]

Thanks for information!

Most aquarists don’t test for ammonia because they feel that their systems consume much more ammonia then their planned stock additions would generate, and this is probably true. Besides a large nitrifying system, another bit of insurance is that the total ammonia generated by a new fish addition is mostly the less toxic ammonium ion. The amount of the toxic unionized ammonia depends on the pH and temperature and is approximately 5-10% of the total ammonia measured by our test kits. Even if total ammonia were to temporarily rise with a new fish addition, an increase in the unionized ammonia could be small, not a spike, and it would not last long. You saw how quickly 1 ppm disappeared with your ammonia additions (that is why I asked). None of this tells you the right thing to do but it will let you sleep at night.

But let’s say you want to be doubly sure ammonia is under control while you add fish. Do what has been suggested, hang a Seachem ammonia detection card in your system. This device changes color fairly quickly in response to the presence of free ammonia. Before doing that, ask yourself “what am I going to do if the card indicates >0.02 ppm or 0.05 ppm?“ Have on hand whatever you want. Salt for a water change or a bottle of nitrifying bacteria to boost your system‘s nitrifying capability, otherwise, you may find yourself scrambling to buy something to put into the aquarium. Also ask yourself whether it is necessary to respond to the elevated ammonia or just let the nitrifying bacteria remove the ammonia. I imagine very few people if any do this sort of thing except for their quarantine tank.

The other thing you could do to convince yourself that you are not overdoing the fish addition is to estimate ammonia generation in your system. This is done by calculating the amount of protein you feed your fish every day. This information is easy to find on a package of commercial foods. Based on the total mg of food added calculate the protein added. The amount of ammonia generated is estimated by multiplying the amount of protein by 0.16 (protein is roughly 16% nitrogen) and multiply that result by 18/14 (the conversion on the mass of nitrogen to ammonium ). This rough estimate will let you know if you are way over the capability of your nitrifying bacteria to remove ammonia quickly.

Good luck.

Interesting, thank you.The effectiveness of aquaria at eliminating ammonia makes me curious as to the primary limiting factor when stocking a tank. Since ammonia can be dealt with, and nitrate is tolerated at fairly high levels while also controllable with water changes, what happens when a tank is pushed beyond it's limits? Is it primarily a stress and disease issue?

 

[Garf]

I’m interested in what readings you get, the truth is out there, lol. Especially if organics impact the reading as is expected.
And you may as well use it, not cheap but works off the same chemistry as the API total ammonia test as we are told by those more knowledgeable. Congrats on your new gadget

Thanks, I've got some OCD issues lol. Most would say I took the rock too high on the left side as it nearly reaches the surface and I may need to break the top off at some point. I like the rock look though and I'm not optimistic enough to expect I'm going to be able to fill this tank chock full of thriving corals.

 

[TWYOUNG]

I’m interested in what readings you get, the truth is out there, lol. Especially if organics impact the reading as is expected.
And you may as well use it, not cheap but works off the same chemistry as the API total ammonia test as we are told by those more knowledgeable. Congrats on your new gadget

You may have missed it but my initial reading was 0.07 total ammonia, 0.003 NH3.

 

[TWYOUNG]

Thanks, I've got some OCD issues lol. Most would say I took the rock too high on the left side as it nearly reaches the surface and I may need to break the top off at some point. I like the rock look though and I'm not optimistic enough to expect I'm going to be able to fill this tank chock full of thriving corals.

I'd like to add that although I feel social media has caused TON's of problems there's absolutely no way I could have put that setup together without the help of many aquarium related sites such as this as well as You Tube.

 

[reef_1]

Interesting, thank you.The effectiveness of aquaria at eliminating ammonia makes me curious as to the primary limiting factor when stocking a tank. Since ammonia can be dealt with, and nitrate is tolerated at fairly high levels while also controllable with water changes, what happens when a tank is pushed beyond it's limits? Is it primarily a stress and disease issue?

I love this topic. Someone just showed me on this site the marinpure study

https://www.cermedia.com/MarinePure%20Project%20Report.pdf

In the end even an empty 20g tank could process 25ppm ammonia per day. That means it could in theory maintain at least minimum 25 smallish fish.

Since I've seen the study I keep thinking, my new shallow 12g tanks has similar bottom surface area as a taller 25g, so I will have similar amount of rock, sand etc

Once I sort the nutrient export with the initial small amount of fish, I might try to to add much more fish than the conventional wisdom would suggest in a 12g tank. I am thinking of 4-5 small fish here. I assume the limit is gonna be stress to fish, so good husbandry is needed and ofc I cant add fish which needs a big tank or a lot of rocks to eat off stuff.

As per the "new cycling science" biofilter never dies and even if one of the fish dies the biofilter will just eat up the ammonia in no time.

So if ammonia is not a factor as per the new cycling science and there is good husbandry of fish then what is the limiting factor if nutrient export is sorted?

Why the conventional wisdom says I can't have lets say 6 small fish in 12g, assuming good husbanry, peaceful species, species which do not need a lot of liverock or space to eat and swim around, but happy hosting a cave and eating pellets.

 

[Garf]

You may have missed it but my initial reading was 0.07 total ammonia, 0.003 NH3.

Yeah, saw that.

For what it’s worth I recently started a new tank for the wife . It contained a few kilos of rock (from a running system for 8 months), a half of a massive bag of bioballs (from a running system for 2 years). The remainder was new sand and ceramic new rocks. Live stock is two tiny clowns and a tiny target mandarin, few snails, few hermit crabs, half a dozen soft corals and a few LPS in a 360 liter system. I carefully measured total ammonia (API) for the first week. I also had a Seachem alert badge in the sump. They both indicated a small rise in ammonia for the first 4 days, before bottoming.

 

[brandon429]

Reef_1 you seem to question my findings in jest, yet u post links that seem to support stated ammonia findings as made by others








When folks like humblefish and Jay develop fish disease protocols that shore up the loss % of fish within the first half year of setup, that too reinforces that reefs control ammonia just fine




we got lucky here and have a very accurate digital test kit to work with

TWYoung can you post a pic of the meter today, so we can log the current readings via pic / and then over time / months as stocking increases, how that meter updates will make this a really handy work thread.

 

[brandon429]

Also, will you please TW run and post an api ammonia reading for compare, or any other non digital ammonia kit u have

 

[Dan_P]

Interesting, thank you.The effectiveness of aquaria at eliminating ammonia makes me curious as to the primary limiting factor when stocking a tank. Since ammonia can be dealt with, and nitrate is tolerated at fairly high levels while also controllable with water changes, what happens when a tank is pushed beyond it's limits? Is it primarily a stress and disease issue?

I just started looking up the effect of free or unionized ammonia levels on fish. The numbers What I have learned to this point is that 0.05 ppm free ammonia starts to cause gill damage, 2 ppm is lethal for sensitive species. This is a very unsatisfying level of knowledge but for now I will use it this way.

If my system hits 0.05 ppm free ammonia, say 0.5-1.0 ppm total ammonia, I will take action but not panic. I am guessing that I have some days before permanent harm is done. Just a guess. Much higher than this, I worry about harming the fish and increasing their susceptibility to disease. So, over 1 ppm total ammonia, I want the problem fixed very soon. I probably slowly lower the pH a few tenths to drop the free ammonia level. I might lose some sleep over this.

There are folks on this forum who will help refine these ideas.

 

[TWYOUNG]

Also, will you please TW run and post an api ammonia reading for compare, or any other non digital ammonia kit u have

Prior to seeing this I retested my ammonia 36 hrs after my latest small livestock addition and the results were exactly the same 0.07/0.003 In the future I can send a pic of the meter. Regarding the API test due you want my interpretation, (negative), or a pic of the vial?

 

[brandon429]

A pic on the api pls just so I can factor it's color among the ones we have

I'm really excited to see api. I don't expect hard yellow zero I expect a light green, but hey anything is possible here/ will be handy to be able to see what api shows on a verified .003 avg nh3 setup

 

[brandon429]

Now that your baselines are set for both kits, we have pics of surface area, it will be handy to see if either meter reacts as an ammonia spike to things like water change events, or if something ever stirs up your sandbed, just anything off from the norm

In the coming days I bet not much changes, but as reefing goes if you notice any tank insult events or deep cleaning runs it would be helpful to see how both these kits react

Reason why: we spend an inordinate amount of time responding to ammonia concern posts when people do things to tanks like big water changes, recover from brief power outage events, sometimes a kid puts in too much food and they want to know if safe levels were exceeded

The readings people post from api alone in threads like that are so off norm we never end up knowing how bad the ammonia was, if a concern at all

Add to the challenge that everyone's worst ammonia readings come from tanks that look just fine for days on end, delicate animals like huge starfish / known sensitives/ somehow always magically survive in the ammonia challenge posts.

U have the kits to give insight on that in a meaningful way given the calibrations ran so far. We will get to see change and rebound rates for both meters once you have data from a few common reef tank challenges in the future

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Interesting, thank you.The effectiveness of aquaria at eliminating ammonia makes me curious as to the primary limiting factor when stocking a tank. Since ammonia can be dealt with, and nitrate is tolerated at fairly high levels while also controllable with water changes, what happens when a tank is pushed beyond it's limits? Is it primarily a stress and disease issue?

IMO, the biggest factor in limiting livestock is what happens in emergency scenarios, such as a power failure, not the nitrogen cycle.

 

[jabberwock]

WOW! First, my ammonia test kit is digital. Second, I'm only asking if it's advisable or useful to test. Obviously your answer to that is no. And thirdly I'm starting my retirement project and dream aquarium and I'm ENJOYING testing my parameters. Sorry if my pleasure struck some nerve of yours.

Congrats on retirement!