Sustained Ammonia spikes are misreads

[brandon429]

Problem with ammonia in a cycled tank

I have had my tank fallow since January because of velvet and I have had an hard time with quarantining my new fish ich and infections prolonging me getting them back in the main tank ive been leaving it long periods of time inbetween feeding the clean up crew I had a real bad grain hair algae...

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again, we have no details, pics, nothing other than updated cycling science to watch it pan out or fail horribly in public.

an ongoing risk remains: typing dumb chemistry posits in the chem forum is akin to dangling ones self over a piranha tank with shorts full of beef liver, freshly sliced and taken. If we keep escaping a chemistry beatdown, and if pics keep showing clean water and happy fish, well fed, then we may be onto something.

 

[brandon429]

Neon rabbit would you do a neat thing with your seneye


w you put saltwater and some dry rocks in a bucket and circulate plus topoff for one month, make the bucket dose up to .5 ppm nh3 on that seneye and see if it comes back down


the only documented example on the Internet for unassisted cycling was tested at day sixty ( and passed )

but we want to know if it’s one month, like a cycling chart says. No heat needed this time of year, merely air bubbled topoff water will work fine and it will remark on the minimum abilities of ALL reef tanks at the thirty day mark. Bet: I bet it can move some ammonia overnite. I bet it will not stay at .5 overnite after a months swirl. Half a ppm, not two, for the love of pete that’s plenty proof



false misread #34, 699

EMERGENCY - Help needed ‍♀️ high ammonia

Hello, I don’t know how exactly all started but I have high ammonia for over 3 weeks now. I’m adding api ammonia lock, prime, api quick start and stability.I did water change 4 times and ammonia is still the same. I had star fish that my puffer was picking all the time and die and one small...

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[NeonRabbit221B]

I have some par readings to grab in my nano and have another month running a personal experiment I can’t disclose at the moment but absolutely!

 

[brandon429]

Ok yes perfect. With that meter the rule books are open to editing. I’ll never pony the cash up for one so am stuck getting all the discovered data as post details across forums but it’s still so fun to log and predict! There are aspects of old cycling science I don’t like. And there’s cycling charts from 1899 that I really like but have never been able to directly test because I’m in a standoff against all ammonia test kit owning

*whenever society started processing human wastewater for return is when cycling charts came about, I don’t know if that’s 1899 or 1930 lol not sure.

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

Neon rabbit would you do a neat thing with your seneye


w you put saltwater and some dry rocks in a bucket and circulate plus topoff for one month, make the bucket dose up to .5 ppm nh3 on that seneye and see if it comes back down


the only documented example on the Internet for unassisted cycling was tested at day sixty ( and passed )

but we want to know if it’s one month, like a cycling chart says. No heat needed this time of year, merely air bubbled topoff water will work fine and it will remark on the minimum abilities of ALL reef tanks at the thirty day mark. Bet: I bet it can move some ammonia overnite. I bet it will not stay at .5 overnite after a months swirl. Half a ppm, not two, for the love of pete that’s plenty proof

How many gallons or water and how many lbs of dry rock? Do you think rubble or larger chunks? Do you want me to dose up to .5 ppm any time I see a decline?

 

[brandon429]

Some normal ratio we'd use in a typical cycling tank. Five gallon pail, ten pounds dry rocks, merely circulated a month then input barely enough ammonia to make your seneye show a bump, maybe into the hundredths maximum

Even bumping up to .5 tenths is massive- you can see from other seneye owners they never get that high not ever, after adding bottled bac.

Then we see if goes back down, it didn't have to move to zero as the first jolt of feed above steady state begins the wheels turning. If it can't move any degree down over that test night, we're stuck. Any measures after the first dose will be adulterated for what we're looking at, merely that first big move down reflects how bacteria can be attained freely, not starved, and able to handle more waste than they've acclimated to


We already know it works by day sixty, now we're moving up test to match a cycling chart final timeline to see if nature gets us ready that quick!

Sorry for delay I'm in mountains and had to drive up here to ridge to get signal. ]



not stalled:

Re-Seeding Nitrifying Bacteria from Main to Frag Tank.

Hello, so long story short, I crashed my fishless frag tanks (20g long) cycle by being too agressive with a refugium and not harvesting my macros. I added Dr. Tim’s about 3 days ago and have been doing near daily water changes to keep the ammonia at or under 1ppm. I’ve decided to seed from my...

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[NeonRabbit221B]

Reached out to Seneye support but have several extra slides ready to soak. Just want to establish communication with them prior to soaking a slide incase its the meter itself.

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

Its possible that I am just dumb and its still a trimming issue. Sadly I took the meter out of the water last night to take par readings upstairs and didn't keep it wet to a picture of the slide won't likely confirm a meter issue.

For anyone else who struggles with chemistry I think I can explain the frustrations in the meter fairly well... Correct me if I am wrong. An important thing to keep in mind is that the meter only measures NH3 and pH and uses those to derive NH4. Ammonia chloride is NH4CL so when it breaks down you have NH4 which loses a proton to make NH3. NH3 is what is toxic while NH4 is the ammonium which is just an ion and potential toxin depending on pH. The lower the pH in your tank then the higher the NH4 levels are and lower toxic NH3 free ammonia. Randy's graph is below

So in order to determine if a value is a misread then you must have an accurate pH and NH3 value. So its critical that when setting up the meter that you trim the pH carefully first, let it compute NH4, calculate the TAN (total NH4 + NH3) and then trim the NH3 value is settings. Might take a few iterations but it should make sense. Still not sure if I have a defective meter but atleast I learned something...

 

[brandon429]

NeonR

That was a wonderful post, truly deeply helpful. In fact I enjoyed the summary of nh3/4 interplay better than Id ever read it. Just because I went back and re read Randy's ammonia article eight times doesnt mean any of it sank in that well. Truly a helpful input I'll link back to in the future.

 

[brandon429]

One more delayed response


Neon do you think seneye is referencing its own pH meter in order to generate us the nh3 status? mind=blown emoji as currently the only aspect of the meter we like and hoped was consistent was the nh3 part, the photometer and ph portions have been hard to calibrate/get agreeing with other digital means of assessing those two


I dont want them to be using the pH sampler to generate their nh3, we only like that portion of the reading. say it ain’t so. By having never owned or ran a reef ammonia test kit, not sure how they physically work in a seneye lol.

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

Not for nh3. I will post some of the replies I got from the tech support group but overall ammonia and ph are the only measured parameters based on the gel coated sensors.

 

[brandon429]

Amazing feedback and device research you will have it mastered very soon.

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

Here are some excerpts of the replied I got
"In regards to your calculations, in theory, you should be able to cross reference the seneye to a test kit by taking the TAN value and using a free ammonia calculator which takes into account pH, temperature, salinity and the TAN value, but these calculations are based on exact chemistry and as such, any minor error in the measurements of the input data will have a drastic effect on the calculated NH3 value. This is also why seneye measures NH3 directly.

Furthermore, we monitor Nh3 as it is the most important form due to the fact it is the toxic form of ammonia and the first stage in the nitrification cycle so you can catch it early on. The Nh4 calculation on the dashboard is simply that, a standard calculation for Nh4 that is based on the other directly measured parameters. We have lots of articles on our seneye answers page which you may find informative and helpful (I’ve linked a couple below) but in conclusion the most important thing is to monitor the Nh3 and not too get caught up on trying to work out the TAN or Nh4."

https://answers.seneye.com/en/water..._NH3_NH4/Photometer_and_reagent_ammonia_tests
https://answers.seneye.com/en/water_chemistry/what_is_ammonia_NH3_NH4

To establish a trimming setting it seems that one must use a free ammonia calculator and very precise input data for pH, temp, salinity and the TAN value... I ordered another pack of slides before realizing that the data on the first pack is the manufacture data... whoops.

 

[brandon429]

Wow, very glad to read those details.


very curious to know what your nh3 reads with it on your cycled reef

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

Any reason why I need to use RODI for this experiment? Was going to mix the water tonight and the slide has soaked

 

[brandon429]

I don’t know if common dechlor agents cause interference in seneye like they can on the titration kits, but any tap water that merely sits overnite circulating is said to have gassed off the harmful portion, ready for mix. That would be an ideal and easy test prep, no need to use our best ion water

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

I am going to mix it to 1.021, slightly above the ideal 1.018. Exactly per reef crystals instructions

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

Alright today I did a check and seneye is reading .007 with a ph of 8.47. Did a mental check with salifert and it still registered a slight ammonia reading. Just for giggled I checked nitrite and it was .2 ppm. Not sure if I accidentally introduced bacteria or if its already showing a drop in ammonia (fairly significant). The only source would be the seneye itself that was dry for about 24 hours before I dropped it in... or the slide itself... I think it would be easier to dose up to 1 ppm so I can physically detect with a test kit and adjust trim as needed... Thoughts?

 

[brandon429]

Can we see a pic of the test tank to discern the working ratios for surface area

And to gain context for the reading how long has this test tank had water, was it dosed with bac or any feed to cycle or is this the unassisted test


Also, has the seneye + slide making this reading been calibrated on your running reef tank? Lastly regarding 1 full ppm dose, I've never seen anyone dose that high on seneye as it's so sensitive merely dosing up to .05 ppm is large, then it moves back to .005 and that motion means cycle is at work. I've never seen someone required to attain the massive amount of 1.0 ppm on a seneye, not even once. It's a massive dose for something this sensitive so we need to know contextual details of the tank vs just those reading outputs above

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

Experimental update....

Dosed 1 ppm on 6/23 for a free ammonia reading on .1 after trimming. In hindsight it was likely higher...
Today I am sitting at .039 and ph of 8.18 and ran a series of test kit tests

Salifert Ammonia = .25 (impossible to read kit)
API Kit 1 (older) = 1.0
API Kit 2 (brand new lol) = .5
API pH = 8.3ish
Reef-pi pH probe = 8.33
API Nitrite = .5
Seachem Nitrite = 1.5
Red Sea Nitrite = .75

Again the first dose was .5 ppm in a 5 gallon bucket with roughly 2 lb per gallon rock. I had everything written out and documented but the pages got wet for weights of rock and water.

My thought is that the first sudden drop was just due to poor trimming and further adjustments can be made to get it more accurate. Seems like a completely dry rock start could very much be ready for fish on day 30.