We should use the collective power of the chem forum to prove or deny the possibility of sustained .25 ammonia in reefing

[lilgrounchuck]

Not a scientist, but wouldn’t the way to really hammer down any of the color changing tests to super low levels be to take our raw observation of the colored result out and stick it in front of an optical sensor hooked up to a computer instead? A sensor would be able to pick up the subtle changes in available light passing through of certain spectrums based on the variations in the color of the test result. That could then be correlated to a numbered scale to get your super low results.

 

[brandon429]

Dan is working on that agreed, can’t wait to see. Thanks for posting! This is my take: any reader we use for calibration has to line up with the biology at play or the reader is wrong. If ANY system of rocks and sand, excessive surface area, shows stagnant ammonia reading while fish and corals are this open, the tool is wrong there’s still no free ammonia.

we will know we are on track to accurate ammonia measures when the reading matches the biological picture of the tank

Ammonia reading 0.5ppm

Set up a new saltwater nano tank used live rock and sand from a different tank that’s been set up around a year I used some of that tank water and also some fresh saltwater too and it’s been running around 2 weeks now There is 2 clownfish in there as everything seemed fine but now ammonia is...

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seneye 1000000% always matches the biology of the aquarium it’s measuring so I love seneye heart emoji. I’m a horrible chemist, no understanding of how ammonia testing works/ poor at math/ but I can spot noncompliance in multi decade web patterns ten miles away. Throw in a well timed sales pitch by bottle bac sellers, now am on a scent trail.

Any system that registers true .5 ammonia with no dead fish will be a dead system in ten hours, .5 implies not enough surface area plus a continual input - this means compounding. All these examples keep living another day bc they’re zero ammonia at the time of reading, they had enough surface area

we saved Nemo above from buying Prime to add.

money changes hands when stuck cycles are the concern, money leaves our hands unnecessarily because stuck cycles are the reef aquarium equivalent of Lamarckian genetics

Cycling an established tank or dose nitrates forever

Hey guys, I have an ultra low nutrient system that I’m trying to boost nitrates in. Previously nitrate was always undetectable. I have fish and feed frozen fairly heavily, but I think my reef octopus skimmer works a little too well. I turned down my skimmer and my ammonia has been up the past...

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there's one. Im trying to stop double bottle bac purchases due to an api reading .25-.5 which is the universal api reading for most reef tanks.

 

[Jason mack]

Dan is working on that agreed, can’t wait to see. Thanks for posting! This is my take: any reader we use for calibration has to line up with the biology at play or the reader is wrong. If ANY system of rocks and sand, excessive surface area, shows stagnant ammonia reading while fish and corals are this open, the tool is wrong there’s still no free ammonia.

we will know we are on track to accurate ammonia measures when the reading matches the biological picture of the tank

Ammonia reading 0.5ppm

Set up a new saltwater nano tank used live rock and sand from a different tank that’s been set up around a year I used some of that tank water and also some fresh saltwater too and it’s been running around 2 weeks now There is 2 clownfish in there as everything seemed fine but now ammonia is...

www.reef2reef.com

seneye 1000000% always matches the biology of the aquarium it’s measuring so I love seneye heart emoji. I’m a horrible chemist, no understanding of how ammonia testing works but I can spot noncompliance with patterns ten miles away. Any system that registers .5 ammonia with no dead fish will be a dead system in ten hours, .5 implies not enough surface area. All these examples keep living another day lol

But is there any chance that the seneye readings can be deteriorating as the slide nears the end of its expectancy....I sometimes think this is the case with ph readings ..it can also be that I have no understanding of chemistry ( because I dont)..
There is an option too trim all 3 Params on the seneye ...I've often wondered about this

 

[brandon429]

Good to know, seneye owners will know calibration time is near when readings mess up compared to steady states while the tank is functioning the same. At least they won’t land on .25 right !

 

[Jason mack]

Good to know, seneye owners will know calibration time is near when readings mess up compared to steady states while the tank is functioning the same. At least they won’t land on .25 right !

Seneye measures and records free ammonia nh3.. nh4 is measured but not recorded

I get a message way before 0.25 ..but the highest I've seen mine go is 0.018.. so way off ....
I started my tank with dry rocks ...added ammonia till 2ppm and added bacteria...its a shame I didnt have my seneye then ...

 

[Dan_P]

This is an interesting thread ...I have seneye on my tank ..the last few months I've noticed its risen slightly ....I was thinking maybe it was a false reading ..but the trend has continued over a few months ...although my results are not as high as stated in the post .25 ....

It used too be always...0.001 - 0.003 ....but for the last month of so it's been hovering around 0.012...it has been higher as high as 0.016 ..
I know these numbers are small compared too 0.25 ...

Just a clarification. The Seneye instrument is reporting free NH3. In addition there is very roughly 4X more NH4. In your case, a total ammonia test kit would report 0.06 ppm, though this is below the detection limit of most test kits. An unmodified API NH3 test kit would not detect this amount.

 

[Jason mack]

This from seneye ..

And today's results

 

[brandon429]

thank you both so much for posting. I am now rereading that eight times for partial absorbtion.

 

[Jason mack]

For me when I first started in this hobby I was told that after cycling my tank ammonia would be 0.... I've heard so many times on here that hobby grade tests often show false readings when it registered low readings ...and that it should be dismissed...because if my tank is cycled it wont have ammonia in it ...but that's not true ...theres always ammonia in a tank..even if it's very low amounts....wer'e told its not necessary to test for ammonia ....yet when something is wrong fish dying etc ...everyone asks have you tested for ammonia...surely being able too monitor ammonia is a good thing ...or I'm I wrong ...?

 

[brandon429]

That's 100% right in my opinion, just the weekend in reflecting on my posts I knew 'safe zone' or 'go, add reef life' has to have clear terminology.

to say a cycle is 'stuck' is to imply a no-go. not ready. can't start.

I called the safe start date 'practical zero' lol this weekend in a post, best I could think of

practical zero is hard yellow on a behaving API test kit, in ideal kitchen light of course.


You did show us we are able to measure pre-uptake levels of ammonia. really good mention of that concept, what we state is zero isn't actual zero, its just the no loss threshold for all life we would add to start a reef.

something not in the tenths of ammonia=can reef=practical zero until a better term is coined lol

so glad we can redefine terms for the hobby with this changing measurement science.

In the end what the public wants is simply a reliable start date without loss. its fun to try and deliver that, and legitimize its overall speed compared to the common 'go slow' reef philosophy.

to understand surface area mechanics and true ammonia behavior is to really move forward in this hobby and to control wasteful spending. an aquarist can use exacting surface area science to clean, move, upgrade, downgrade, and uninvade multi thousand dollar reef tanks consistently and without loss. we can do more to save captive reefs in distress and turn them around when we are free by using reliable surface area science vs always doubting what bac can handle based on the measure tool or ability to read it correctly.

Using bottle bac exactly when its required is awesome science, overuse in the name of fear about what bacteria do should be something we all refuse to entertain.

 

[brandon429]

Dan until today I didn't realize per your calibrated adjustment earlier that hundredths ppm are the functioning zone for ammonia that's neat to know in a working reef tank.

I remember guessing years ago it might be in the thousandths or hundred thousandths, its way more prominent than that.

its fascinating to conceptualize how the surface area presentation modulates that measure fully. we deal in so much extra surface area in reefing that ripping out a 15 year sandbed all at once doesn't leave us with too little surface area (source: sand rinse thread) live rocks are convoluted amazing places of football fields surface area/amazing to me.

one of these days seneye will be present on a before/after sandbed ripping job and we can see how quickly the hundredths steady-state reverts even with the whole sandbed gone or tap rinsed.

lets predict if the working averages will change after bed ripping and a few days reset period: I predict no they'll still be not in the tenths, ammonia conversion rates will revert back to normal averages before the bed removal, even with the bed gone, because it was simply excess surface area. The minimum required surface area to run a reef tank is the amount required to keep that ~hundredths measure average going. *feed spikes or minor losses/dead snail for sure will move it. averages

continuing with my offer here, there is no period at which we can reduce surface area and have a .5 sustained it cannot occur.

with ammonia production/input held in place, a reduction of critical surface area is a quick compound 100% of the time it cannot hold at .5 is the hard fast prediction.

if no .25 or .5 is possible, then I question any claimed stalled cycle across reefkeeping.

 

[Jason mack]

Ok I've been looking back over the last 12months at my results and then checked it against my build thread....the highest my ammonia has been is

0.026....but it jumped from 0.003 ...I thought it was when I changed my slide ...but this is in the middle of the month ...I checked my build thread closest date I could find was this ..

Build Thread - Mack’s Reef dino support group

+2 +3 Mack, Hope your doing okay.

www.reef2reef.com

I had just upgraded my skimmer a couple of weeks before and cleaned and altered my sump too fit it ....other than that the tank was great...I hadn't lost any fish ...but this was the point when my tank went from running at 0.003ish too 0.01- 0.026...its always baffled me why it jumped ....

 

[brandon429]

...

 

[brandon429]

Remember, I like bottle bac and I’ve personally recommended dr tims before to cyclers. My beef is very specific, no mechanism exists in reefing to hold ammonia in the tenths ppm free ammonia in a reef tank. Thats my claim, along with nitrite not ever factoring in anyone’s cycle and being injected into reefing to perpetuate the searchable notion of a stalled cycle.

 

[Jason mack]

I dont think they stall I just think people dont have the patience too wait ..they dont see anything happening as quickly as they want and assume nothing is happening...

 

[brandon429]

Agreed. They will absolutely input more bottle bac to feel good, and reinforced. we haven’t lost a single tank in the hundreds of threads where I popped in and said there was no free ammonia. The claim may have not been accepted for pages of follow up content / debate lol but in the end, the recurring proofs of zero ammonia have always been consistent

it’s only recently we are allowed to see a form of reef measure that stops all the approximation, stalls, and revenue generators associated with cycling.

seneye, please do nitrite for us. Not that it needs to be factored in a cycle, but I’d like to see old school cycling charts re valued in the hobby. When ammonia and nitrite hit practical zero, they don’t come back up, only nitrate is variable on all the cycling charts we can source.

 

[Ardeus]

Perfect timing! I am currently looking into upgrading the API test performance In a spectrometer. I want to push the detection limit to 0.05 ppm. By the way, the chemistry of API is fine. The human vision is the issue

If this goes well, it could be fairly straightforward to test how quickly a sample of aqauarium water and a sample of substrate consume ammonia. @taricha just performed an exploratory experiment that indicates low levels of ammonia is consumed in a few hours in an aerated aquarium water (years old system) sample. This could be extended to determining whether Chemiclean has a detrimental effect.

I didn't use chemiclean, but I used azithromycin and I was on top of the NH3 readings of the Seneye. No change during the whole process.

 

[brandon429]

I want to thank the management at r2r for allowing this exploration.

how long would my profile have lasted if this was posted on any other forum=nanoseconds. faster than the transition past .25 is how fast Id have been canceled.

in the end Im only seeking an accurate measure, to compare to given search results. totally fair and not pinpointing anyone other than the search returns, working with and challenging thread patterns is a fun part of posting in forums.

 

[brandon429]

Cycling problems.

Hey guys, I was hoping someone could help. I'm currently cycling my first saltwater tank (Although i have three freshwater tanks,) but i cannot for the life of me get the Nitrites to go down. I know patience is key, but it been four. months. I'm going nuts! I started the cycle by adding a dead...

www.reef2reef.com

4 months in

Dr Tims video says nitrite can stall a cycle but it cannot ever do that

See how a recommend to buy bottle bac happened, down with stuck cycling it's the biggest hoax in reefing.

im going to log all the false bottle bac purchases i can find and build up a massive proof of money transfer where not required

 

[brandon429]

Fishelss Cycle Questions

I was in the same situation a few months ago & added a bottle of bio spira. The nitrites went to zero in a day or two. Could be coincidence but that definitely worked for me. Also 4ppm is a lot. Everything I read suggested 2ppm (could be totally mistaken tho) Well hell, I just reread Dr. Tim's...

www.reef2reef.com

Watch for critical updates coming here. Nitrites do not stall cycles in a reef tank, ever, it's never happened. We don't have a way to accurately test for nitrites in this hobby, and if the bac that regulate nitrite haven’t caught up as ammonia control is proven, they can catch up later. You do NOT have to wait until nitrites are zero, nobody at macna does. They don’t bother testing for them and if some showed, they would not pack and go home they would proceed since nitrites don’t matter in cycling or skip cycling.

We are being sold remedies for stuck cycles that have never occurred. His tank directly read nitrite positive recently, make predictions on if fish will live/tank cycled or not before he updates.


We have exposed a total fallacy in reefing. Cycles cannot stall nitrite doesn’t factor in reefing if its there or not.


Summary of this thread: cycles cannot stall in a reef tank in a home. Systems are too hungry for ammonia to leave trace amounts, and nitrite doesn't matter even when it's there. The sum total of the entire hobby believing false concepts about what bacteria do is a bunch of lost tanks to invasion and unneeded unhelpful purchases.

only the pros seem to have command over cycling, so they have no trouble starting when they want to. We can cycle tanks just like the pros, and free of charge if you have a couple weeks before requested start date.

when bacteria are in doubt, and you’re talking about a reef tank, take the assumption side of the coin they’re doing fine vs being limited in some way, and you’ll be thinking correctly about filter bacteria and surface area mechanics in hydrated media. You have been led to believe what we add in a bottle makes the biggest difference, that is not the case. Simple cleaning your aquarium makes it self regulate bacteria as long as you keep it wet. You are inoculating diverse marine bacteria with every wet slug shell added, every wet frag plug transferred in, and any living healthy coral you add gives you excellent heterogeneity, no extra bottle bac supplement required. To add coral is to already add coral supporting bacteria to your tank. Simply feed them


be warned, a wave of probiotics beyond the probiotics of typical feeding and back flushing waste is coming to take your cash



****************by the year 2030 nearly all reefing will be purchase based, every aspect. We won’t feel free to reef without buying something as a digital, dna or other measure.


Old school tank self regulators will be decrepit old men in caves reliving tales of the rebellion to a granite wall eventually. Ways that certifiably make coral grow with simple feed and water changes will be relegated back to just lucky strokes, nothing long term without the purchase and then re supplement ongoing purchase. cue vader breathing