Sustained Ammonia spikes are misreads

[brandon429]

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/need-help-determining-cause-of-ammonia-spike.834466/

false alarm. Pics of fish in a normal state and clear water and open corals to come soon.


and another false read, corrected out of the gate based on opening post details:
-3 mos after fritz cycle which is 1 day cycling bac
-carries multiple fish and corals whole time, that's cycled, and in no universe can't fail to be cycled.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/cycling-issue.927030/

 

[brandon429]

Hey I pulled up your build thread and upon first pic, the largest sps stand I recall seeing lol, curious if in the experience that led up to that growth you had seen any of your reefs have stuck ammonia despite looking great

thats what we’re digging at here, that disparity in visuals v test kit.

that 180 you have would not budge out of the thousandths ppm conversion rate if you dumped an entire mini bottle of Dr Tims cycling ammonia into it, the command for free ammonia would eat it up in five minutes and your pink sps would sprout another arm


your reef and my reef, though miles apart physically, no where near the same bioloading feed and waste input, still run the same conversion rates due to the physics of wet surface area in a high flow zone. this is endlessly fascinating and can be used to troubleshoot so many reefs...prevent the sale of so much bottle bac

 

[Foothill Corals]

I have not actually measured for ammonia in over a decade. I just wait four weeks and start throwing corals in then around two months I start adding fish. I do it backwards of most, corals first.

 

[brandon429]

That’s the artistry mode and it’s paying off bigtime

looks astonishing!

You used a form of testless ammonia prediction in your approach, that's the predictability we feel applies to all reefs. Incredible reef tank

 

[melonheadorion]

ive been running into the ammonia reading issue for the entirety that my tank has been going. as of about 2 weeks ago, maybe 3, my nitrite readings have finally gone to 0 and have stayed that way. however, ammonia has never been zero. the highest i ever saw it was .5, but that was one time, and ever since it has been .25, including the test i took today.

i test very often because i am a worry wart, but it has never seen zero. i will also add that it has never had an actual reading below .2 with any test kit. i bring my water to the LFS, and they see the same results. i have 2 test kits myself that i use. one an API (test result picture shown below) as well as a red sea test kit. the red sea shows .2, but you can get the idea that it is basically the same as the API.

below, i also included a picture of what 0 in a red sea should look like so that you can see the contrast between a positive reading and a negative reading, look like with this kit.

although i have a .25/.2 reading every time, i have also had fish in the tank for at least 5 weeks with those readings. i have been adding slow to ensure that my ammonia doesnt jump. i currently have a diamond gobby, 2 clown, 1 bi color blenny, and a cleaner shrimp, and none of them show signs of distress or danger that one might expect with ammonia. the one thing that i have seen is that over the course of the last 3 weeks, the shrimp has molted twice, but he is also young, so i chalk it up to growing. the gobby has been in there a week, and is acting normal now that he is beyond the shy stage.
i put up my predicament on R2R last night, and got the same kind of responses that the LFS said, so i feel safe with the current status. i know that the water readings without being in a tank are 0, something within the tank is creating the .2 reading. however, at the same time, the fish as thriving, so if fish arent dying and there arent any bad things going on, no need to worry so much.

in the end, i dont think my readings are misreadings so much, since they are confirmed on 3 seperate tests, but i do think that having a reading of .2 is not necessarily something to be worried about unless you are running into livestock problems.

p.s. its a 20 gallon tank

 

[brandon429]

I cannot possibly thank you enough for posting the full picture set


The test kits which show to have a concern, plus the tank in its ultra clear glory with gramma down low acting normal, this is the entire point of the thread, examining this conflict. We need to apply TAN conversions to get those readings interpreted properly, but the secondary point of the thread is that what ammonia does in a post- cycle reef, for everyone, is the same.

We never needed any ammonia testing for any phase of your tank and until testing becomes more streamlined, i recommend use the predictive method vs today's approximation kits.

 

[brandon429]

It wasn't just the other day a scientist in the chem forum told me that informal studies using reef tanks as patterns is useless.


To determine that fact is why this thread exists. I believe that live time right here we can apply the predictive method and it will totally align with the reef tank picture and video, for everyone. Guess we'll know by page 50.

Here again is the rule in the matter I hope to prove as a finding:

After cycling everyone is running so much extra surface area with rocks and sand that any common bioload plus some as a shock adjustment can be handled. It didn't vary tank to tank, that ability, we could spot it in pico reef patterns way back 15 years ago as a truth, they were non diluted systems certain to be killed by free ammonia

And when they weren't... we knew there was a scalable pattern of surface area per gallon that covers all reefs, post cycle, using the common arrangements

Today's tuned seneyes agree. Someone benchmark a tuned verified calibrated seneye against an 800$ hach nh3 meter and i guess we'll have next level verification

when any aquarium ammonia testing kit, including seneye, tries to say a reef is a noncompliant outlier the test is wrong and not the rule, its this restrictive. we catch misreading seneyes using the rule, all the time. reefs are very streamlined in ammonia control after a cycle completes they don't vary like our testers might indicated at times.

anyone who plugs a seneye into a running reef and gets hundredths or tenths ppm is running unsoaked slides on an untrimmed machine. all post cycle reefs using rocks and sand run in the thousandths ppm nh3 conversion rate, including every example link in the thread. enough seneye readings are in here along with their calibration proofs I think the claim is now rock solid. it'll take a seneye or other machine equally calibrated to upset the rule, not just an api or red sea reading.

 

[melonheadorion]

It wasn't just the other day a scientist in the chem forum told me that informal studies using reef tanks as patterns is useless.


To determine that fact is why this thread exists. I believe that live time right here we can apply the predictive method and it will totally align with the reef tank picture and video, for everyone. Guess we'll know by page 50.

Here again is the rule in the matter I hope to prove as a finding:

After cycling everyone is running so much extra surface area with rocks and sand that any common bioload plus some as a shock adjustment can be handled. It didn't vary tank to tank, that ability, we could spot it in pico reef patterns way back 15 years ago as a truth, they were non diluted systems certain to be killed by free ammonia

And when they weren't... we knew there was a scalable pattern of surface area per gallon that covers all reefs, post cycle, using the common arrangements

Today's tuned seneyes agree. Someone benchmark a tuned verified calibrated seneye against an 800$ hach nh3 meter and i guess we'll have next level verification

when any aquarium ammonia testing kit, including seneye, tries to say a reef is a noncompliant outlier the test is wrong and not the rule, its this restrictive. we catch misreading seneyes using the rule, all the time. reefs are very streamlined in ammonia control after a cycle completes they don't vary like our testers might indicated at times.

anyone who plugs a seneye into a running reef and gets hundredths or tenths ppm is running unsoaked slides on an untrimmed machine. all post cycle reefs using rocks and sand run in the thousandths ppm nh3 conversion rate, including every example link in the thread. enough seneye readings are in here along with their calibration proofs I think the claim is now rock solid. it'll take a seneye or other machine equally calibrated to upset the rule, not just an api or red sea reading.

after doing some head scratching and looking dumb trying to figure out what all of the scientific mumbo jumbo meant, i feel that i figured it out after doing some research on the total ammonia readings.

to help explain, what i found for both of the different kits that i have (red sea and the API), they read total ammonia which is the ionized and unionized forms. the unionized portion is the bad stuff that is harmful to fish, from what i read. i also found that the PH in additon to water temp will change what the harmful ammonia levels are. since the test kits test for total ammonia, we cannot really differentiate what readings our test kits are telling us without the calculation tool that has been posted here before. after all of that, i found that the red sea kit actually gives you a quick chart of toxic ammonia levels, as seen in the pic below. my total ammonia levels have always shown .2 on the red sea kit (the API kit shows the same), so i am certain that the test kit reads accurate, but not taking into account what part of that is actual toxic levels, will lead you to believe that .2 is a "oh no" scenario, when in actuality .2 is actually .02, and true ammonia doesnt become toxic until .05.
i found this article that helps explain all of that. https://pethelpful.com/fish-aquariums/The-Truth-About-Ammonia
the article also talks about the correlation of temps and PH and how it drives the toxic ammonia levels.

im thankful that this was all brought up to me. i didnt realize that PH and temp had any major effects on the ammonia. after looking at the instructions further, the red sea kit actually gives you a chart, whereas the API kit does not. i dont think that the API kit is necessarily incorrect, but doesnt explain all of that, thus leading people to believe that they have high ammonia.
for those newbies out there, such as myself, where i was worried about .25 continuous reading, dont be worried. its not as bad as you probably think

 

[brandon429]

you have really helped us tie up this example MHO thank you vm for the completed review, fast and efficient

 

[brandon429]

two pages everyone bought in, yep. For sure, free ammonia. api said so, the entire crowd buys in despite post #19

moving this gem to post #1



https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/ammonia-in-instant-ocean-reef-crystals.819853/

 

[brandon429]

@reefinatl

Curious how you validate the tank is being killed by ammonia vs common fish disease

 

[brandon429]

@DSC reef

hey with that many smilies I cannot tell if you are being sincere. They happened so fast I couldn’t see if you had clicked and read the examples


and even better, have counter examples to link for us.


if you have chemistry challenges to findings here you know we only deal in links as proof, right->

not someone’s opinion but how a hundred tanks present, thats our proof. We use other peoples tanks as proof, after predictions have been made, before we get tank pics as follow up. Thats our mode. Our mode doesn’t amend cycling rules so that someones api reading can make sense.

what links do you have

 

[brandon429]

I believe it is accurate to say that the hottest topic in reefing is whether or not post cycle reefs can handle free ammonia or if they vary.

take any reef on the board, no ten respondents will agree. Our hobby disagrees over the #1 molecule we must have total control over at all times.

 

[allsite]

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/high-ammonia.788377/
another, took four pages to fix (false read whole time)

I am moving toward judging more based on fish behavior. The remaining clown seems ok. Upgrade test kit can't get here soon enough. Thanks for the insights.

 

[allsite]

I believe it is accurate to say that the hottest topic in reefing is whether or not post cycle reefs can handle free ammonia or if they vary.

take any reef on the board, no ten respondents will agree. Our hobby disagrees over the #1 molecule we must have total control over at all times.

I'm thinking I blew it up by removing live rock in the middle of some equipment/room environment issues. IO RC has ammonia but my tank had problems too. Time to rebuild it.

 

[brandon429]

Your thread was a rough one- well the crowd of referees was mighty rough, cool of you to stay present as we all bashed and hashed out whether or not you had uncontrolled ammonia.

that clownfish shows that you don’t now, even if you did, after removing things. ~

in the end, changes made to your tank might have spiked some, agreed. But our thread title is about sustain, and nobody here as of yet has any seneye readings from any tank to show a sustained reading so that’s how we operate. The new tests coming are still not seneye, so they’re part of other misread threads.


we decide your tanks ammonia not by color test kits, but the actual tank picture. Even today when your frogspawn opens, the small toadstool frag opens, the fish swims normally, that means no free ammonia lingering.
if there’s one thing I‘m 1000% sure of, it’s that we don’t want to see what the new test kits (non seneye) show for your water.


we only want tank pics here, update them as you see fit and the predictions will always hold. We only like digital test read outs here, or tank pics, thats how this one thread prevents descending into total madness like this time yesterday morning. :)

summary: not interested in non digital ammonia testing, it causes madness for the public, misread posts are findable constantly for color compare kits and misreads are not common for calibrated and tuned seneyes.

we do want tank pics, how animals fare day to day, whether they feed and act normal, are how this unique thread discerns free ammonia status. Your clownfish can develop a disease any time not due to ammonia, but due to the fish that were input and then lost as new trial additions

more than likely the tank needs to be fallowed and fish quarantined if you have input new fish to try lately they bring in disease.

 

[homer1475]

Worst use of the emergency tag yet.

 

[brandon429]

tag is used to catch the eye and calm the fear of free ammonia before they post the alert thread.

this thread uses other people’s reef for patterning, their collected links and works and follow ups, that’s our meat and potatoes





if anyone posts here as a detraction, have some work ready I can read.




we don’t want mean typing, we want thoughtful links that make a point. Our point is how fish, corals and clean up crews act normal in pics, as the world panics about what Red Sea says.

feel free to insert any link or finding that shows how post cycle reefs cannot control ammonia, that’s how to formulate a challenge we can use for benefit here

 

[homer1475]

EDIT:
Removed as it's not needed drivel.

 

[brandon429]

Edit xxxxxxx free ammonia analysis causes rifts in the nerd communityxxxxxxxxxxxxx


should you and I edit a bit, to start this day better than yesterday? Your call

Im here earnestly working against the grain to develop free ammonia patterning within the hobby

if you can’t add constructively to that, or formulate a challenge to claims using findings you too made in earnest, then we won’t learn anything new here