Tank emergency - need to lower ammonia!

[aydemir]

Well I siphoned out a ton of gunk from the bottom of the sand bed. Wow it smelled terrible! I tested the ammonia before I did anything and it was close to 1 ppm, so I'm still pretty nervous. I'll test it tomorrow hopefully with a lot of the gunk from the bottom gone there will be less ammonia being produced. Nitrite and nitrates are still at zero as well.

I agree. He may still get an ammonia reading but it will be detoxify. I would think that would be the best and fastest reducer of ammonia. I've used it myself twice for small spikes

I've read a lot of conflicting advice on prime actually detoxifying, it seems to be a false claim from Seachem...either way I'm not counting on it right now. Unfortunately I don't have anything other than the API test for ammonia so I don't even know how much free ammonia is in the tank right now.

 

[NowGlazeIT]

Ammonia is up and nitrates are zero, I would get some bottled bacteria in there. I do believe prime neutralizes ammonia.

 

[aydemir]

Ammonia is up and nitrates are zero, I would get some bottled bacteria in there. I do believe prime neutralizes ammonia.

Yup I have been adding bottled bac for the last 3 days according to the label.

 

[aydemir]

Update: After siphoning the gunk out of the sand bed yesterday and doing about a 40% WC, the water is much clearer today. However, ammonia still sitting around 1 ppm... still worrying me. Monti cap, acro and birdsnest are doing terribly and some of the zoas are closed but all the other corals are in good shape. Fish look fine too, clownfish were super hungry this morning and the yellow clown goby is perching everywhere as usual. Pic below to show state of the water - kind of hard to tell from the picture but it is slightly hazy:

 

[Malcontent]

I’ve been bamboozled once again by major corporations and their false advertisements - thanks for linking that thread!

If you question Seachem's claims on freshwater forums you'll be crucified. Imagine having marketing that good!

 

[aydemir]

If you question Seachem's claims on freshwater forums you'll be crucified. Imagine having marketing that good!

It's weird that people will question products specifically designed for ammonia removal (ammo lock or ammonia pads for example) but have some strange affinity for prime when its really made to be a water conditioner. AFAIK they have not altered the formula at all so you would assume any water conditioner using sodium thiosulfate (there's tons) should have a similar effect on ammonia as well.

 

[aydemir]

Update again: Water is now crystal clear, fish are very normal. The acro that was doing poorly is actually getting nibbled on by the yellow clown goby but it looked like it was on the way out regardless - guess I'm not trying any more acros lol. Monticap is like 90% dead, but was doing bad since around 4 days ago and I wasn't hopeful with it. A few birdsnest frags I have are bleaching but weren't in great shape since they were in a bucket for almost 2 whole days without light. Some of the birdsnest frags look like they will be fine.

All zoas and LPS are fine.

Tests this morning (API): Ammonia 1-2 ppm (can't tell...), nitrite 0, nitrate 0.
Very concerned at how high the ammonia is but dang other than the SPS problems I wouldn't be able to tell there was a problem by looking at the tank.
Regarding these tests: I probably used a 2x prime dose (estimated) when I was doing all the PWC up until yesterday. I've done a lot of digging on the forums and have since stopped dosing prime as it seems to be useless for actually detoxifying ammonia. Also from what I've read, if prime is in fact affecting the tests, it would be causing the API kit to read LOWER than what is actually in the tank, which is bad news since the ammonia reading is already really high. In this case I would suspect the ammonia level might actually be as high as 2 ppm, yikes.

Side note: LR was kept in buckets as well and I wouldn't have expected to get significant beneficial bacteria die-off from just a couple days since the water was from the original tank (0 ppm NH4, N02, NO3 from API, I tested after 2 days in the buckets), and I'm a little surprised nitrates are still zero. I do have a bag of purigen in one of the HOBs and a small refugium with chaeto in it though. One of the buckets without LR and just corals in it had around 1 ppm of ammonia and 0.25 ppm of nitrite on the second day (birdsnest and monticap bucket) so clearly the LR was doing something since the clownfish were in that bucket as well and would produce significant amounts of ammonia relative to the water volume?