Test results are in and its not looking good! Any advice?

[Bryson.bobby]

I agree, may never get to the bottom of it otherwise. Just sad it took 9 pages to get moving in one direction

@NPRW, the #MODS deleted my comment. This is honestly ridiculous. Smh

 

[HotRocks]

Good afternoon,
This thread has been cleaned up. Personal attacks have been removed. Let's keep this thread on track and refrain from attacking someone for their advice. Debating advice is acceptable in a respectful manor. R2R is a family friendly site. We strive to maintain that environment. Thank you all for your cooperation!

 

[Ralph Ritoch]

Good afternoon,
This thread has been cleaned up. Personal attacks have been removed. Let's keep this thread on track and refrain from attacking someone for their advice. Debating advice is acceptable in a respectful manor. R2R is a family friendly site. We strive to maintain that environment. Thank you all for your cooperation!

Just to clarify, "Questioning moderation" is against your terms of service? Its bad enough there's no link to this terms of service that supposedly exists but we can't even question your behavior? Isn't that called fascism?

 

[Bryson.bobby]

My comment wasn’t a personal attack, just a thank you...anyways, I was just a little po’d. Sorry for that.

 

[Ralph Ritoch]

My comment wasn’t a personal attack, just a thank you...anyways, I was just a little po’d. Sorry for that.

One of my posts were deleted for "questioning moderation". Terms of service should be posted somewhere. I can't see what posts of mine are deleted but most of them were just general statements and not personal attacks. This site just lost all credibility!

 

[Crabs McJones]

Terms and rules

You must agree to these terms and rules before using the site.

www.reef2reef.com

From the TOS:
Be mindful of yourself and others. This forum is not a democracy; it is privately owned. If rules are violated we retain the right at our discretion to remove, edit or delete posts and, if necessary, ban or remove members. Any abuse toward our staff may/will result in immediate suspension of your account. Complaints about moderator decisions may not be made in posts; instead send a private message to a moderator. If a moderator deletes or edits one of your posts and you disagree with the action, contact the moderator concerned. Do not repost deleted material

Just to clarify, "Questioning moderation" is against your terms of service? Its bad enough there's no link to this terms of service that supposedly exists but we can't even question your behavior? Isn't that called fascism?

 

[MnFish1]

Taken directly from the article here on how to cycle a tank that was given to me in this thread...

Cycling an Aquarium

Cycling a new aquarium. One of the earliest topics a new aquarium hobbyist needs to learn is how to properly cycle their aquarium. There is a ton of information on this process and many different methods on how to accomplish it. There are many different chemical and biological cycles our tank...

www.reef2reef.com

"
There are many different takes on this and it is largely a matter of opinion. So here are the most common ways from worst to best in my opinion.

Adding a fish – while it will work as an ammonia source, why would you make a fish suffer in an environment in which it can’t properly shed its toxins?

Ghost feeding – When you add food to the tank you are adding much more than just what breaks down to ammonia. While none of it will be a problem, other than possibly algae, this is an uncontrolled process.

Adding a shrimp – The shrimp will decay and create ammonia, but again, this is an uncontrolled process. How much ammonia will this add and how quickly? I don’t know.
"

In my case I added some fish food and shrimp.

Because someone disagrees with you does not make them a troll. You are using freshwater tests for saltwater aquariums - as just one example that makes what you're doing seem odd. Adding ammonia to a 'reservoir' to 'cycle the water' (water that supposedly already contains ammonia) - doesnt make sense. But you call me a 'troll' for suggesting you're perhaps incorrect.

FWIW - I never said any thing about 'how to cycle a tank'. I dont know what your comments above have to do with what I said - For the record - Nitrifying bacteria in the vast majority grow 'in the water'. They grow on substrate etc in what ever container they are in. Thats all I was saying.

You I think misunderstood what I wrote. And - believe me - I'm going to 'GO AWAY' to quote you - gladly - but I'm sorry to say - I'm not sure your attitude fits what this site is all about.

 

[Ralph Ritoch]

Terms and rules

You must agree to these terms and rules before using the site.

www.reef2reef.com

From the TOS:
Be mindful of yourself and others. This forum is not a democracy; it is privately owned. If rules are violated we retain the right at our discretion to remove, edit or delete posts and, if necessary, ban or remove members. Any abuse toward our staff may/will result in immediate suspension of your account. Complaints about moderator decisions may not be made in posts; instead send a private message to a moderator. If a moderator deletes or edits one of your posts and you disagree with the action, contact the moderator concerned. Do not repost deleted material

There should be a link to it somewhere. Honestly at one point when someone questioned why the thread was still alive and not moderated I tried to find your rules and couldn't find them.

 

[HotRocks]

Terms and rules

You must agree to these terms and rules before using the site.

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Crabs McJones]

There should be a link to it somewhere. Honestly at one point when someone questioned why the thread was still alive and not moderated I tried to find your rules and couldn't find them.

There is usually a link at the bottom of the site, with the recent changeover it went missing, and it's being worked on

 

[Bryson.bobby]

I think it’s time to get thread back on topic. Where did we leave off?

 

[Ralph Ritoch]

Because someone disagrees with you does not make them a troll. You are using freshwater tests for saltwater aquariums - as just one example that makes what you're doing seem odd. Adding ammonia to a 'reservoir' to 'cycle the water' (water that supposedly already contains ammonia) - doesnt make sense. But you call me a 'troll' for suggesting you're perhaps incorrect.

FWIW - I never said any thing about 'how to cycle a tank'. I dont know what your comments above have to do with what I said - For the record - Nitrifying bacteria in the vast majority grow 'in the water'. They grow on substrate etc in what ever container they are in. Thats all I was saying.

You I think misunderstood what I wrote. And - believe me - I'm going to 'GO AWAY' to quote you - gladly - but I'm sorry to say - I'm not sure your attitude fits what this site is all about.

I didn't add ammonia, I added fish food and dead shrimp to cause the ammonia spike as is suggested in nearly every article about cycling a tank. This step is suggested in nearly every article I read about cycling a tank including the article that was suggested in this thread. When you attacked me for using ammonia, that is when I assumed that you were trolling me as a few others in this forum have and frankly I was fed up with it. Maybe you are sincere, maybe you are not, and I'll leave it at that. This thread had actually started going into a good direction until the moderator brought it back into the mud. I understand the need to prune this but it also brought all the muck back to the surface.

 

[Ralph Ritoch]

I think it’s time to get thread back on topic. Where did we leave off?

This thread was all about the tank test levels which have all been resolved. There were some side-tracks about flow, and lighting but this thread was meant to be about correcting bad test results.

 

[Hemmdog]

This thread was all about the tank test levels which have all been resolved. There were some side-tracks about flow, and lighting but this thread was meant to be about correcting bad test results.

Glad everything is resolved. Anymore questions or you got it from here?

 

[Ralph Ritoch]

Summary of things which may now be missing...

1. Raise salinity to 1.024 (didn't work for me but may work in some cases)
2. Adjust temperature range (again, my coral are used to the temperature they are in from the wild so this isn't much of an option)
3. Cycle the tank (well this is a mess since simply having fish in the tank will cause it to cycle, I can't even begin to explain how much confusion this has caused)
4. Stop dosing Prime if you want your tank to cycle
5. Do dose bacteria (such as quick start) to properly cycle tank
6. Sump/Protein skimmer can help in most cases (as noted this isn't currently an option for me, and in 40 gallon or less tank it isn't really a requirement)
7. Water changes (I've seen numbers thrown around about this, 100% change, 75% changes daily, 20% changes weekly, never seen any real pro's or cons of each so we could talk about this)

Did I miss anything?

 

[Ralph Ritoch]

Oh, Biggest problem for me at least. I can't trust my instrumentation!

The hydrometer I'm using is old and reports the ocean water at 1.018. It is rainy season and near a river so it may not be wrong. The Torch coral seem to indicate it is wrong as they didn't like the 1.025 salinity. It is VERY hot here, 30C, so my salinity tends to raise very fast. I lowered it to 1.023 and the coral seem better with it.

My Ammonia test also is suspect since it is always reporting 0.25 for ocean water and reportedly is known to have this problem. I made RO water with synthetic salt and it came back blue, which isn't even a valid color of the result so I honestly don't know what a zero would look like.

I'm not confident with my Nitrite tester either, simply because I haven't yet had a result above zero. This could be due to bacteria in the tank, I honestly don't know yet.

What I do know is that the Ammonia level of the tank is dropping because the test is less green and more yellow. This could be from Prime, from RO water to reduce salinity, or from bacteria. No way to know. All of my levels are in safe ranges but not ideal ranges.

 

[Bryson.bobby]

I may have missed this, but is there any way u can get a little further away from the river and then test the salinity?

 

[dopey]

Not sure what salt you have. But mix a small amount using weight and test it. That should give an indication if your hydrometer is off. Mixing by weight is extremely accurate in my experience.

All salts I've used give clear amount of grams for a given volume of water at a certain salinity.

Could build trust or confirm a bad hydrometer.

 

[Ralph Ritoch]

Not sure what salt you have. But mix a small amount using weight and test it. That should give an indication if your hydrometer is off. Mixing by weight is extremely accurate in my experience.

All salts I've used give clear amount of grams for a given volume of water at a certain salinity.

Could build trust or confirm a bad hydrometer.

If only! I have no idea what kind of salt this. It literally came in a clear plastic bag. Thinking back to my first day though I originally started with the wrong salt and did it by weight and the hydrometer read lower than expected. I found an online calculator to calculate how much more I needed to add to get it where I needed it to be, and it still came up a little bit short. I will contact the fish store to find out exactly what brand of salt it was and then I should be able to test the hydrometer that way.

 

[MnFish1]

Oh, Biggest problem for me at least. I can't trust my instrumentation!

The hydrometer I'm using is old and reports the ocean water at 1.018. It is rainy season and near a river so it may not be wrong. The Torch coral seem to indicate it is wrong as they didn't like the 1.025 salinity. It is VERY hot here, 30C, so my salinity tends to raise very fast. I lowered it to 1.023 and the coral seem better with it.

My Ammonia test also is suspect since it is always reporting 0.25 for ocean water and reportedly is known to have this problem. I made RO water with synthetic salt and it came back blue, which isn't even a valid color of the result so I honestly don't know what a zero would look like.

I'm not confident with my Nitrite tester either, simply because I haven't yet had a result above zero. This could be due to bacteria in the tank, I honestly don't know yet.

What I do know is that the Ammonia level of the tank is dropping because the test is less green and more yellow. This could be from Prime, from RO water to reduce salinity, or from bacteria. No way to know. All of my levels are in safe ranges but not ideal ranges.

You may not know it - but there is also a relationship between temperature and salinity. Depending on how your hydrometer is calibrated (what temp) - if you water is at 30 degrees C - you could have a difference of .002-.004 lower salinity.