Sustained Ammonia spikes are misreads

[brandon429]

Don't think I mean that it's impossible for someone to buy dead bac it's not. They exist

Why we never factor that here: these are all full running post cycle tanks. Bacteria don't die months after a cycle. They do NOT starve if you remove fish for fallow timing, in every tank here the bacteria were obviously alive with no contest to the matter.

But in my cycling tank threads we still don't factor dead bottle bac in our posts because folks do other supportive actions that make up for dead bacteria small risk%

For example, 90% of all bottle bac posts are someone waiting weeks for permission from the public to state a cycle closed. They've fed exceptional amounts of food or ammonia based on the thinking more is better/ merely waiting weeks after feed alone will cycle a tank with or without bottle bac present. This is one of about five ways reefers end up reinforcing their cycle starts without knowing it.

Again see this example: read this thread and tell us why it would never matter if howaboutme used dead bottle bac at the start, he'd still be cycled because of simple feed and wait time:

Build Thread - My SPS Waterbox Peninsula Mini 15

Hi all. Long time member (I think I joined right around when R2R started or took off years ago) but got out of the hobby for about 6 years and now I am back! I don't see many build threads for the PM 15 (mostly the 25) so thought I'd share my journey here. This post will be a bit behind...

www.reef2reef.com

Dead bottle bacteria is never going to factor in my cycling posts. If we keep going years and years and years without startup losses then we're onto something. You can't stay lucky ten years in a row, someone's tank will die and they'll post hate to me if indeed water bacteria have as hard of a time setting up shop in water as the greater public view would have us believe.

Spend time researching every single entrant back edited into this thread. Click on name/ thread history/ chart how their tank did after we reviewed it here.

Zero crashes, all normally running reefs, no seneye fails, just api and red sea causing panic with no real basis

 

[talal reefer]

Watch for assessment trending in cycling posts: is always dead bacteria. Any problem you post regarding ammonia in a cycling tank or running tank: dead bacteria.

Anytime ammonia says noncompliant on a non digital test kit everyone agrees are notorious for misreads, we divert to dead bottle bac

Or in this thread, dead tank bacteria that used to be alive

Always water bacteria unable to set up shop in water.

It can't be just a misreading cheap test kit reported to us as nh4 guess vs an accurate digital nh3 measure... it's always gotta be dead bacteria in some way...


Team
You are not encountering dead bacteria in water any more often than you're encountering a dead bird flying through the air.


use the indirect markers we use here to assess ammonia control when your cheap test kits cause you pause

Are you fifteen days past a bottle bac cycle and still thinking you're stalled? You're not, that's a non digital test kit + old cycling rules misleading you. Your animals are fine - because - you're cycled, they'd be dead if you weren't.


Bumped because a rash of failed cycle posts are active and they're all false misreads.

Thanks for this amazing thread iam talking the knowledge I learned and spreading it in my community here in Kuwait and u know what ? Everything I have been reading here checks out we have quite a few new tanks being set up now for different friends the smallest is a 850 liters
My tank is roughly 24 days old now and it filled with sps colonies and alot of fish and I have zero problems went through the ugly phase super quick and had a bloom for a week and the water is crystal clear now I have some two clams and very sensitive acros milis and a few acro tenuis

No life's lost and everything is thriving my sps are becoming more colorful u were right my cycle was done on day one

 

[brandon429]

Hey thats a truly beautiful reef, just perfect looking. Agreed fully: the ability to carry ammonia is just about instant nowadays. It’s the last concern any display reef will ever have...ammonia control.


there isn’t a time that reef above needs to be tested for ammonia ever again, that’s the heart of the application to this thread-the inherent trustworthy nature of display reefs to retain ammonia control

The trick in that kind of setup above is meeting the food demands of the system, the corals, without a thriving benthic community found on years-old live rock. There won’t be a filtration issue for that tank ever.

*it’s thriving above thanks to your initial ammonia control, allowing fish carry and the feed you’re able to add to support fish + fish waste becomes coral feed and begins food web establishment in the new tank. Today’s supplemental coral foods instantly begin support and corals readily feed on them, a quick start reef is very 2022.

*fish disease management is the next big challenge depending on variables associated in sourcing those perfect fish above. Should there ever be trouble with fish, forget about assessing ammonia it won’t be part of the causative

patterns here show that right during times of coral loss, or a fish dies, the reefer is immediately self prompted to run an ammonia test. They have a parameter they want to pin on the loss.

they expect zero ammonia, the bane of my existence, or they’ll feel their cycle is broken. So they test with a cheap ammonia kit that is nearly certain to show ammonia in most running reefs (because they read as nh4, ten times over nh3, which is all we care to know) and when it reads .25 or .5 they make an alert post and begin buying supplements.


I hope the entire takeaway from this thread is that there isn’t a time you’ll need to test for ammonia in that reef above anymore than you need to know helium levels in it. The parameter is simply going to be fine and in control for the life of the reef, seek other causes if fish disease ever emerges.


a rule operates this thread: in a display reef tank, ammonia rising does not precede fish loss, fish loss precedes ammonia rising. If ten fish die due to velvet when someone is on vacation, the keeper comes home and takes an ammonia reading and it’s off the charts. They assume that’s what killed the fish

see how backwards that is

our thread shows true cycling science that anyone with a digital nh3 meter like seneye, or hach nh3 for the lab types can verify.


the only time ammonia will be out of control is when multiple fish are allowed to die and degrade in the tank. There isn’t any other time ammonia will be out of control in a display reef. Any other cause will be unnatural events such as poisoning the display with copper etc.

 

[brandon429]

I will personally never pay for nor own an ammonia kit from any maker unless seneye wants to give me a free one for being their best fanboy ever

 

[brandon429]

Team, as I keep posting this thread to help people understand false ammonia readings, notice this pattern:

click on anyone's name who I linked here as an example. Click find all threads

did they ever start a thread about their whole tank dying after we reviewed their system here? are we not at 100% everyone's tank did not crash?


do you see how everyone's tank here was asymptomatic / clear water open corals/swimming fish feeding, eating fine, all day, every day for weeks/months/years

so it's possible to collect about 75 ammonia reading alerts, yet we never see one death loss? hmm, interesting.

do you see how in 10000% of every example, red sea or api ammonia was the lead and sole cause of the issue, it was never actually death in the tank?


Sustained ammonia readings aren't dead bottle bacteria in your cycle


Sustained ammonia readings are the impact we feel in the hobby by thinking that after a cycle, ammonia won't remain in control as long as the tank has water: none of the tanks in this entire thread should have even been testing for ammonia, they're all post-cycle.

 

[Garf]

Can’t resist any longer, lol

 

[brandon429]

Im glad to have any input on the matter. I have been very, very unimpressed with that meter showing 2.5 ppm in a cycled tank. .9 in another, in Mr Saltwater's reef it showed .19 ppm nh3/ reefs don't run in the hundredths level

watching vid now to see what it says about these conflicts

 

[brandon429]

Oh I see that is Mr SW's vid yes I debate that .19 as a misread

he didn't make a panic post bc he's mrsw heh

*let the record reflect: no, I don't think cycled reefs run at .19 I think the meter is going to do for a new generation what not reading the instructions on API ammonia for nh4 conversion has done to our hobby the last 30+

That video is very very fitting for our thread thanks for posting.

*I added in MRSW's thread on that device that there's still some redemption possibility for the meter.

let's say .19 ppm is it's calibrated safe zone for a running reef, AND we can run the test in 60 days on the same tank and get nearly exactly that reading, to show stasis

it would then be reasonable to state that any sharp rises off that norm could be an alarm, and perhaps we can use a calibrated meter above to run nice cycle proofing tests, but that's after benchmarking.


anyone who expects a reef tank to run zero ammonia, while using that meter, is in for some new bottle bac purchases.

 

[brandon429]

*questions unanswered about that meter:


why does it say nh4

take MRSW's reading above, and report it as nh4, lets verify that's not an nh4 reading above, in which case I would not hate on that meter so badly

it shows dual function readout ability for nh4 and 3, so let's see the machine run the ~13x conversion math.

so far, everyone is posting bonkers readings and I have not seen a dial that says "nh3" that's a cliffhanger unaddressed here. the machine above per mfr specs is calibrated to 77 degree water, reefs run warmer than that, and it has a .05 ppm nh3 form error rate. I don't accept that mrsw's reading of .19 converted to .14 is correct, unless that's nh4 then I'm marginally happy.

seneye is still the king ammonia meter for the hobby, nothing comes closer to matching such close measure in thousands of reefs, without causing panic to the owners.

 

[Garf]

There May be a typo in their spec sheet, it clearly states it’s total ammonia though. The reading confirms Randy’s ammonia article in which natural seawater readings were all over the place.

 

[brandon429]

So we must down convert it just like api! well done. thank you very much.

Mr Salwater's readings, converted: .19 ppm nh4 ( I picked the 5.8 unit above, we don't know pH 8.0 is fair and 79 degrees is fair tank estimate)

nh3= .01~ ppm ammonia

lets do another one for slightly lower pH, not all reefs are 8.0 we see in 20 years Randy forum posts, let's run him at 7.8 pH for the other extreme: (3.7 value) = nh3 ppm as .007!

seneye calibrated would read in my opinion: .001-.006~ max ppm

therefore, for sixty bucks, I now about fifteen posts to go edit heh

You really helped our thread today, glad to have the posts.
This ammonia meter is liked now, though it may not like me for hating on it prior lol.
B

 

[brandon429]

the claim, the ammonia test says: a 9 months reef came uncycled,

Ammonia Pegged at 8.0 After 50% Water Change, Nitrate 10ppm, What's is happening!

Okay I have a question but let me update you first, I had a Rusty Dwarf Angel die last night and my firefish blenny is just sort of sitting on the bottom since yesterday morning, I do believe you are knowledgeable so can you tell me what kind of ammonia test I should be using, I mean there has...

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reminder: 9 months, full of coralline, rocks, plants, and the cycle just magically stopped because a test kit said so.

is that not our entire 8 pages here/


*he lost 2 fish after 9 mos and zero disease preps? stocked right out of a pet store, with no preps, and that means ammonia caused the loss?

When we read Jay's fish disease forum, how many fish are killed by free ammonia at nine months/

old cycling science has mislead the OP into ignoring the real cause of loss, and instead hyperfocusing on chasing an incorrect ammonia reading just because the new Hanna kit said it was 2.5 ppm nh4.

 

[brandon429]

Established Tank Ammonia,Nitrite Refuse to drop even after water changes,Please help if you have the time

Okay, I posted a thread about this very same problem or at least similar to it. Before I begin here is a quick background on my knowledge, My 1st freshwater tank I started around 12-13 with live-bearers, I moved to saltwater around 15 years of age I am 37 now. So my point is I usually can figure...

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team, an update to a prior study at the start of the month



non digital test kits= have a false ammonia alert running for weeks on end.


upcoming full tank shot: let me know if the tank looks crashed.

this is a false ammonia alert post signaled by non digital testing, again, not a seneye post


is that theme readily apparent, that seneye entrants aren't going to be found in unison claiming broken cycles in months-old tanks?

 

[brandon429]

Any reader here


Go do your own research on Ammonia alert posts, aggregate some pattern you can see in the and post your summation of that pattern you found and analyzed for the hobby-we want to know if you find reef tank cycles inherently stable, or inherently weak and varied among tanks


We have too many 1 tank examples here, we need group work/collective data sets that people who study cycles and ammonia control took time to amass. please show/link here anything that reveals what reef tank cycles do via study or group analysis/pattern analysis.


*For example
does reading ANY aspect of this study below make us fail to see that reef tanks inherently control ammonia, fast, everyday, all the time?

Analyzing Hanna Ammonia checker Hi784, chemistry and performance

Hanna's saltwater ammonia checker, Hi784 is out and I wanted to take a look and assess its performance for reef tank water, and see where some interpretation of results might be helpful. This post will include some data on a display tank processing ammonia, and in a later post I'll do a...

www.reef2reef.com

is it apparent that in order to be valid, every tank found in this thread we're reading must be in direct violation of Taricha's findings on known ammonia processing rates to be participating as a focus here


all those tanks, looking normal, not crashed, delicate animals like starfish etc and other fish doing fine-but it's crashing


Our collection here is a bunch of symptomless tanks claiming a broken cycle months/years into running, we're studying if that can actually occur in reefing or if it's just forum-driven panic.

 

[reef_1]

Can’t resist any longer, lol

What did I just witness the hannah checker just shown 0.19ppm as well - that is the API's standard showing.

+ the whole API master and reef testkit thrown in a single box takes as much space as a single hannah checker
++ I can do all tests in 15 minutes
+++ costs less as well

 

[brandon429]

we are a reintegration group for filter bacteria doubters. that's what this thread does....changes groupthink flinching into confidence in water bacteria.

 

[brandon429]

EMERGENCY - ammonia help

im having the most random ammonia spike in my nano 10 gallon, its been setup since beginning of sept 2022, and i added a bubble tip anemone about a week and a half ago its been happy and all has been good until yesterday morning i woke up and it looked as if it had started to melt away and then...

www.reef2reef.com

here's a new one. posters are telling him to add reactive dosers immediately, without any troubleshooting

what does the full tank show

what does the red sea nh4 reading show/has been showing for eight pages here

 

[brandon429]

Ammonia Spike in 9 month old tank

Lost my lawnmower blenny this morning checked parameters, ammonia spike! Added prime immediately, should I wait a bit and do water charge then more prime today? Of course, I'm going out of town for 3 days tomorrow. Tank is 125 gallon, 9 months old. Only thing different I did was add 14...

www.reef2reef.com

a new one, presenting in the exact same pattern as all priors logged here. only the widespread use of calibrated, digital nh3 meters can stop this trend.

the tank pics show a stellar happy reef, with enough surface area to process an ounce of liquid ammonia everyday of it's life added without any harm. that's a large, powerful, stacked-to-the-hilt in aged rock surface area reef felled up by API ammonia.



A new troubleshoot completed 12/10/23

Unknown Ammonia Spike

Hey all, Relative beginner here, I am having an issue that I think is just an issue with the test kit. I have a Biocube 32 that was cycled about three months ago and all levels have been fine until one day ammonia spiked to .50ppm (Using API). I started the tank using API and have slowly been...

www.reef2reef.com

3/1/24
A new one worked exactly as the prior ones

Insane Ammonia Spike.. 8.0 +

Hey all. I’m in desperate need of answers. My 75 gal reef tank has 8.0+ of ammonia. Stocked with 2 clowns, a royal gramma, and a goby/ pistol shrimp pair. It also has a few different soft corals. This tank has been established for years. A few months back, our city flushed their system with...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[brandon429]

As we study and collect false ammonia alerts in 2024 that all present the exact same way the last three years, without change, don't forget readers here get to audit every call made and logged here

Take any work example from this thread

Click on their avatar

Select find all posts

Read the posts that came after I made a call about their reef

What's the outcome? Any crashes? Any deaths? Or was it: normal reefing thereafter

Don't think for one second that a collection of fifty false ammonia alert examples without any deaths meant there was indeed ammonia from each tank: there wasn't.

I predict in all of 2024: api and red sea did this.

 

[brandon429]

Ammonia in QT tank that *should* be cycled…

So I’m doing a QT on a new fish (smallish flame angel in a 10 gallon). For doing QT I usually keep a bunch of inorganic filter media (bio balls, cut up fabric sock) in the DT sump and then put it in the QT hob on setup (and throw away after). This has typically worked well. Did that, and for...

www.reef2reef.com

we normally don't include quarantine setups here for analysis because they're low surface area and the exact setting in which I'd believe ammonia control issues might occur (but never ever in a reef display that's running without all the fish dead already, in the rocks rotting)

the reason to include that QT example is because:

-a confound that caused a false alert was found (copper)

that confound wasn't mentioned in the description it had to be extracted in the discussion by the assessment parties in the thread.

see how these posts always start off with a test kit reading description? nobody ever posts: my tank is dead.

it's always a test reading, but a normal tank in pics. every. single. time.

people are always going to leave out, or not know to relay, the things that make these cheap test kits misread. most of the time we don't even get a pic of the kit, we get a typed relay of what color they thought meant 8 ppm.


none of that is useful in ammonia troubleshoots.

here's whats useful in ammonia troubleshoot trends for reef site:

-is it a reef display or a qt?
-how long has the setup been running?
-what symptoms do your animals show?
-what kind of test kit are you running, is it a seneye?
-were you expecting a running reef tank to show zero ammonia, at all times? (old cycling science, they don't)
-what does the actual reef tank look like in pics (notice: every pic ever posted to this thread is a perfect reef with no symptoms)