What ammonia level do you see?

[Nymz]

My tank’s been cloudy for days and I’m trying to figure out what’s going on. It’s a coral-only tank right now and all my snails are accounted for. It’s been set up for about 2 months.

That said, what ammonia reading are you seeing? I’m reading it as 0.5ppm.

 

[brandon429]

never factor ammonia in anything going on in a fish less tank, that's what all stocked reefs read on api pretty much.

 

[brandon429]

the only time ammonia won't be in compliance after a cycle in a reef display tank is when fish die and are left in the tank to rot-that can't happen in your setup. simply do a rip clean if you have a nano reef and it'll be 100% clean, no testing required. skip cycle rip clean. if you have a large tank, use carbon and or uv. don't dose things to it.

even if you have fish there's no need to test for ammonia after a cycle, ever. all you have to do is account for them; if some are missing, get them out.

 

[brandon429]

Updated cycling science permanently disagrees with old cycling science which said ammonia had to be zero

It's never zero. That's an ideal reef reading for nh3 above, after applying estimates of course.

You can't underestimate the impact that reading + the incorrect rule set has done to this hobby:

Oversold millions of dollars of bottle bac

Caused countless false stuck cycle threads


Oversold a million gallons of prime


Caused mass doubt in 50 year old cycling charts which never allow for ammonia to rise up due to natural causes after that initial day ten drop


It's caused pure reactionary madness in our hobby even though that's exactly what a healthy reef runs at.

 

[Gtinnel]

My tank has been running for several years and on an API ammonia test I would show between .25-.5.

 

[brandon429]

Thank you for stating .5 as the acceptable range i totally agree that's the range. So is 8 ppm lol on that kit I'm not joking, strange confounds happen at times and everyone always always blames the bacteria. Ammonia is so in demand it'll never be out of spec in a high surface area display, most of the fish accounted for. Even some of the fish left to rot can't overcome truly active surface area


=firm rule of updated cycling science, to never doubt ammonia. Exists in stark panicky contrast to:

Sustained Ammonia spikes are misreads

The reason you think your reef tank can’t control its ammonia is due to false training from old cycling science. That and you don’t own a seneye on the tank in question: if you did, you wouldn’t ever think your ammonia was out of control...

www.reef2reef.com

We can thank old cycling science for that thread mess above. Every example: ammonia is just fine.

 

[Nymz]

Well that’s reassuring.

I wonder if the cloudiness I’m seeing then is precipitation? I’ve been trying to correct my pH with Kalkwasser dosing via ATO. Thanks to sky high indoor CO2 levels in my Florida apartment, my pH defaults to 7.5. If I leave the windows open and create a cross breeze then it’ll jump up to 8 pH but then go back down to 7.5 over the course of a week. This would be a viable solution if I lived anywhere but Florida, where in late November it’s 80°F with 81% humidity. I was hoping kalk would be a long term solution but after testing alkalinity, it’s risen from 10.3 to 13 in ~4 days while the pH is still only 7.6 - 7.7. Since my tank is almost entirely soft coral/gorgonians, this seems like a non-viable option.

Temp 80°F
Cal 460
KH 13 (10.5 before kalk)
Mag 1275
Nitrate 25
Phosphate ?

 

[brandon429]

Fantastic troubleshooting

I live in an apt

I never had trouble with pH for a decade in a home across town. This concentration of breathers lol and smaller square feet = my 17 year old blastomussa colony has broken in the middle, skeletal dissolution from the once strongest area. Polyps are ok, it’s now separate tubes of merletti pretty much now as classic acidic breakdown of calcium carb skeleton

There was never any testing nor dosing in the nano so obviously some pH testing would have been wise in hindsight. No other corals affected, couple small pits in my favia brain are also likely symptoms.

 

[seabear]

Brandon, I'll certainly give you 0.50 ppm of total ammonia not usually being a problem (especially if it is just temporary).

However, probably not so much 8.0 ppm, which would be about 0.38 ppm of NH3 (at 1.025 sg, pH of 8.0, and 78°F). I'm guessing that was an exaggeration, even though you said you weren't joking. Even at a pH of 7.8 (which is quite possible), NH3 would be closer to 0.24 ppm (still concerning). And at a pH level of 8.2 (also quite possible), NH3 would be about 0.58 ppm (not safe).

But like you said, another instance where ammonia really wasn't a problem.

 

[taricha]

That said, what ammonia reading are you seeing?

That color is probably best interpreted as negative for ammonia.

I do not think precipitation is likely as your pH keeps dragging down to the middle 7s.

 

[brandon429]

Seabear

it's hard to search 8 ppm panic posts, click on them, see if things are dying? I've been in like fifteen of them before. they are all over

search one

see if there's a predictable degree of surface area


see if animals live and only fish die (disease, did they do any preps running mixed species?)

see if the water is clear

see how bad they dig in heels over a non digital test kit

see if they have a high plant loading which also uptakes the ammonia in question

see if they have a lot of dead fish still wedged in the rocks (the only known single cause of ammonia noncontrol in legitimate display tank reefing)

see how many months old their tank is...compared to the ammonia line of a cycling chart.

see how long they claim the event has been happening and then cross-check that on any seneye chart ever made and uploaded to the web

ok I can do that for you sb. from the link above:

Ammonia Pegged at 8.0 After 50% Water Change, Nitrate 10ppm, What's is happening!

Okay I have a question but let me update you first, I had a Rusty Dwarf Angel die last night and my firefish blenny is just sort of sitting on the bottom since yesterday morning, I do believe you are knowledgeable so can you tell me what kind of ammonia test I should be using, I mean there has...

www.reef2reef.com

your hint is that api can't be wrong at a certain reading level. In turn, it's fair to request you to show more than one ammonia control loss thread you've worked in, to give you this breakpoint in concern. a known unsafe level seen in a display tank


we agree and accept that low-surface area quarantine setups can have ammonia issues, when fish are present. corals in frags in a tank with no rocks and no fish will have no ammonia issues whatsoever; they're their own surface area.

there is no degree of api ammonia control panic that we buy in updated cycling science, because internet posters write and perceive lots of off the wall things per above and because they're not reporting to us using digital ammonia meters.

nobody in human wastewater management ascribes to broken cycle science, it's the lamarkism of the reefing world


only reef forums train for the fear of inadequate or starved or missing water bacteria in warmed fed water


any form of teaching that cycles can stick, starve, or fail to setup on a very timely basis is pure reef bunk. any hint of the matter comes from no linkable experience, that's the prediction.

 

[brandon429]

Seabear


name one time you've seen a legit ammonia spike in a display reef caused by anything other than fish. I am legit curious to know where you get the concern from.

I'm interested to know the multiple events that led you to a concern over ammonia in a reef tank cycle. I have on the verge of a thousand running examples of it never, ever, ever ever being a concern.

what I mean by that is: a few have a seneye, 100% of them have perfectly normal running reefs and a non-digital test kit saying something to cause the panic.

that's not a real ammonia event you're used to seeing, it only appears that way.

 

[V A R I A N T]

@Nymz - I see 0.25, very normal for how this test kit performs. Good luck with your tank

 

[brandon429]

the bottom line will always be: ammonia noncontrol in a display reef tank is a completely made up premise. It doesn't occur prior to a multiple fish kill, by rule it occurs only after.


I don't mention dosing the tank with antibiotics, or electrical zaps, or anything atypical in the rule set we gain from studying posted web threads going back to 2003. that's illegit reefing/procedural mistakes don't reflect on weak bacteria which is the heart of all old cycling science claims about unreadiness/didn't set up/stalled cycle etc.


if a tank is running normally as our tanks do, there is 0% concern over a cycle issue after day ten of lead-up using the common ways we all cycle tanks. I have plenty of data to show that using other people's cycled tanks live-time.

no fear, after day ten of assembly. you can put down the ammonia kit forever then, we show.

 

[seabear]

I'm interested to know the multiple events that led you to a concern over ammonia in a reef tank cycle.

I can't say that I've ever personally seen (or even read about) fish deaths in the hobby due to ammonia. I feel that they are pretty rare. However, my concern with 8 ppm ammonia (NH3 levels between 0.2 and 0.6 ppm) come mainly from resources like:

• https://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-02/rhf/
• https://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rhf/
• https://answers.seneye.com/en/water_chemistry/what_is_ammonia_NH3_NH4/what_ammonia_level_is_safe

Seeing that I've never exposed fish to these levels of NH3, I can't provide any personal experience. But the following chart is from the above link from Seneye...

So at a total ammonia level of 8.0 (at a pH of 8.2, 78°F, and 1.026 specific gravity) the NH3 level would be around 0.58 ppm, which might be considered deadly according to Seneye. Now granted, at a pH of 7.8, the NH3 level would be around 0.24 ppm (in a toxic zone, but which might not result in death; however, it would still concern me).

your hint is that api can't be wrong at a certain reading level.

Nah, I think it provides a ballpark (like many other hobby grade test kits). It provides a reference where we can see an approximate level, and gauge whether it is increasing or decreasing. Plus, it's open to some interpretation (and can be in error due to using an old kit, or the effect from using Prime in your tank).

Obviously 8 ppm is a fairly extreme example. But I'm in agreement with you that a result of 0.5 ppm of total ammonia isn't cause for panic.

 

[brandon429]

well said. but as I'm reading, we automatically validate/accept their stated level?

at what point does the macro view of the tank/all those points above supersede the relayed reading estimate from a color-perception challenged individual taking the reading in a green-hued LED lit kitchen/ biases are the point

or maybe they did the dropper held sideways trick, vs straight up as the directions show (the same directions that tell them to use nh3 evals then they report nh4 to us in panic mode)

and we only see the vial color and argue about it for pages

see how the confounds are part of these claimed big cycle breaks but we only get lucky to uncover them>

there comes a point we tell folks if their ammonia is at toxic levels or not by requesting a tank pic, not a test reading. I truly feel if that weren't the case, everyone stopping reactive dosing for supposed ammonia events would have some tank crashes

I'm literally telling every encounter to stop testing for ammonia in their display tank, and nitrite, and it's approximately year 7 on that particular kick no joke. It's neat to inspect outcomes this way, it puts other people's tanks on the line to cause change in cycling science but the key is everyone is willing to trust the patterns relayed by other peers


not their test kit guesstimates, what the pics show.



we're at 100% no tank crashes as long as any inspection thread wants to run. the sum total of these trends tells me we always begin from the side of no, you don't have an ammonia problem right up until the time that we see a legit example of one.


*I am 100% sure the last 25 yrs up to right now the internet assesses a broken cycle this way:

help, my cycle is broken. Its .5, or 2ppm, or .2/ or eight ppm

umpires: let's assess what killed your bacteria.


there's never a time that too little bacteria or too sleepy bacteria aren't the assessment, where old cycling science goes. its: get a guess reading, validate nothing, assign how bacteria in water must've died, assign a recommended purchase

we're click trained.


Expect to see old cycling science overselling bottle bac. always a doubt


expect to see new cycling science, never ever ever ever doubting ammonia control in a display setup where fast warm water swirls over rocks with constant feed input and direct import of marine cycling bacteria.

 

[brandon429]

This shows the locked in mode of old cycling science

State 8 ppm

Get recommended to buy bottle bac even though it's a stocked running reef with average surface area and benthic cue markers

EMERGENCY - Ammonia spike after upgrade

sorry if this is in the wrong thread section but I need some emergency advice. I had a well established 55 gallon and decided to upgrade to a 90 gallon. I was told to use new sand (dry sand rinsed a ton) because my sand was ancient 10+ years from the guy who gave me the tank. I also added 20lbs...

www.reef2reef.com

tank transfer events aren't ammonia events. organics stirred around cause those test kit conflations and ammonia isn't stored in sand, or in rock, to be released during tank moves (see seneye-charted tank upgrades and sandbed swaps, we have some)

Am adding that just to highlight changes in the paradigm of marine cycling. There was a time we entertained any stated reading as correct, that time was last week he he

Team I fully believe a new rule set is coming where 0% of cyclers fear ammonia. We already build 40 page cycling threads using zero testing even for dry starts

If no testing is needed at all during cycling, why mess around with misreading ones? Why buy expensive ones? if we simply cease testing for ammonia in display reefing, and never begin a cycle with 2 ppm ammonia added, things streamline so much better than listening to salesman's rules. Use fish food vs ammonia

(Starting a reef tank after a certain number of days buildup wait works better than guess testing we show. We count # of days with water in the tank vs await non digital kit permission)

 

[seabear]

If I understand the scenario in your last example, the original poster did a tank transfer which caused two different brands of ammonia test kits to return significantly elevated test results. So someone suggested adding bottled nitrifying bacteria to help process the additional ammonia.

tank transfer events aren't ammonia events. organics stirred around cause those test kit conflations and ammonia isn't stored in sand, or in rock, to be released during tank moves

You are saying that there wasn't actually any additional ammonia, and that the chemical reagents in these two different brands of test kits react to organics in the same way that they react to ammonia in samples. @Randy Holmes-Farley does that sound plausible?

And since there wasn't any additional ammonia, you're saying that adding additional nitrifying bacteria would be a waste of money.

I agree that ammonia doesn't become trapped in the sand or rock (and get released during a tank transfer). But instead of explaining the elevated ammonia results by the reagents reacting to organics in the sample, I suspect that once the buried organics are exposed to oxygenated zones, they start to get broken down into ammonia (and it's this ammonia that the kits are responding to, and not to the organics in the sample).

Since the pH level of the water in the new setup was never revealed, the NH3 level can't be determined based on total ammonia. Plus, API's color chart skips from 4 to 8 ppm, so total ammonia could have just as easily been 6 ppm. Therefore (with a pH of 7.8) NH3 levels could have been less than 0.2 ppm (which is high, but typically not lethal in the short term). This might explain why all the fish appeared fine.

Yes, the coral issues were likely caused by the stress of the move (physical trauma, sudden change in alkalinity, different flow rate, increased lighting, and so forth). The corals might have even benefited a little from the additional nitrogen (in the form of ammonia). But unfortunately, we didn't get confirmation either way on a shrimp.

I'm a bit of an old school reef keeper, but I can see how not testing for ammonia in an established tank can apparently produce the same results as testing (no deaths which can be directly attributed to ammonia poisoning). Most of my ammonia kits expire well before I ever use them up. I think that most people stop testing for ammonia once their kits start consistently reporting safe levels.

 

[brandon429]

am expecting some tank losses, full wipeouts soon in the threads where we simply do not factor ammonia if there are attribution error occurring in the dissected cycles.





I always am amazed we're positioned as teetering on the verge of some sort of ammonia noncontrol, yet everyone who studies seneye posts (Dr. Reef used them to make important bottle bac findings) or the actual hanna meter (Taricha's article) always wind up reinforcing natural control dynamics in their test reefs. nobody finds the wildly noncompliant filter problems we see in daily posts that use nondigital kits.

would enjoy seeing any form of digital measure showing ammonia coming up from a sandbed or from rocks in a display reef.

 

[seabear]

It indeed would have been interesting to see what Seneye would have reported.