What ammonia level do you see?

brandon429 · Nov 28, 2022

we need someone to remove their fish and inverts and corals in an aged live rock and aged sandbed tank

have baseline hanna measures in place or seneye, before disturbance

then stick attack it into mud/ see how big the spike is.

Randy told me once in chat that nitrate has no storage zones in reef tanks, so I'm amazed to imagine ammonia having any. he did not rule out half-degraded proteins in the sand or suspended bits of particulate waste being able to reduce further into nitrate upon breakdown; just that the gas itself isn't stored/bound to matrices etc. I would assume the same for ammonia, hope he chimes in.

Taricha is working on cycle stress tests for article goodies but this takes a while. I'm sure when he releases some findings it'll be solid good work like the priors.

seabear · Nov 28, 2022

brandon429 said:
Randy told me once in chat that nitrate has no storage zones in reef tanks, so I'm amazed to imagine ammonia having any.

I was thinking more like storage zones for organics. I imagine that these zones would have to be devoid of oxygen.

brandon429 said:
hope he chimes in

Me too.

brandon429 said:
Taricha is working on cycle stress tests for article goodies but this takes a while. I'm sure when he releases some findings it'll be solid good work like the priors.

I'm looking forward to reading that.

Although we do know that it's possible for ammonia to become elevated when the ammonia source is increased:

Adding Ammonia to Established Tank for Nitrate Control

Hey guys. I am struggling to keep my nitrate levels up on a newly established tank. What are your thoughts on dosing low amounts of Ammonia to feed corals and produce Nitrate? Aiming for around 10ppm Nitrate but stuck around 0-3ppm. Was planning on diluting my ammonia down to 1% and dosing 4x a...

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But this was a relatively small addition (0.5 ppm of total ammonia) compared to 8 ppm.

brandon429 · Nov 29, 2022

I never believed anyone's 8 ppm was true

look at this example below of a deep testing readout in api

that level initial color is supposed to mean total collapse of the filter biota.

because cycles don't vary much at all in timing nor control rates, any test kit claiming a difference is the immediate suspect, not the biology. I believe future articles on ammonia control in a display reef will show this strong trend.

these systems have a shock absorber effect to the degree nobody can link for us an ammonia wipeout tank not preceded by a total fish kill. that's amazing given the millions of ammonia help threads posted to reef forums, they're all symptomless other than a test kit reading on some gradient ran with a method/procedure we can't verify.

cycles don't stall because given this surface area, temp, flow and feed all systems trend towards .0x or .00x nh3 conversion rates, says the best data we can access via group in 2022

the non digital test kit cycles are the extreme ones, the digitally-tracked cycles are the tame ones across the board.

brandon429 · Nov 29, 2022

Cycling new reef tank question

Sup guys I am cycling my reef tank with algeabarns cycle kit... I added it yesterday.. And I tested ammonia about 12 hours after starting cycle... ammonia was over 8.0 ppm... I just tested today it reads zero ammonia nitrites and nitrates.... Is it possible for tank to cycle that fast?? I also...

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that guy could claim reasonably 8 ppm at the initial post. that's supposed to kill everything, five ppm was the instructed max limit before bacteria death. all the 8 ppm stuff is just guesses, the charts don't go that high.

seabear · Nov 29, 2022

brandon429 said:
posts from Dr. Tim in the forum state/support that current # of processing bacterial cells can choose to step up and process much more ammonia, the shock absorber effect.

Can you please link that for me? I'd like to read more about it. Thanks in advance.

While I believe that current bacteria populations can process the daily variations in ammonia production (like additional fish or coral food), I was under the impression that the bacteria populations will ultimately adjust based on the availability of their food supply (ammonia and nitrite production). Although it might not be quite this simple, as I've read somewhere that this bacteria can go dormant for awhile, when deprived of an ammonia source.

Assuming the above to be true (what you're calling old science), I can see why people recommend adding bottled bacteria when the current population can't meet the current ammonia production (usually a short term event, as the populations will ultimately adjust). Logically this seems to make sense, as dosed bacteria starts processing bacteria immediately (even before they colonize onto the hard surfaces).

However, dosing bottled bacteria might be of limited benefit. It seems to work better at seeding bacteria, than processing massive amounts of ammonia (as it doesn't instantly eliminate ammonia). I assume that it's a numbers game. Anyways, I feel that dosing bacteria won't do any harm to your tank (just your pocketbook). But you could be right, in that it's just a drop in a bucket when considering the bacteria populations in our established tanks.

brandon429 said:
they're all symptomless other than a test kit reading on some gradient ran with a method/procedure we can't verify.

I'm not so sure that we can't verify elevated levels of ammonia (at least to some extent). Some of these examples use different brands of kits to verify the results (although maybe not yielding an exact concentration). And in the case of the Adding Ammonia to Established Tank for Nitrate Control, we see a Seneye monitor essentially verify an API kit (this thread is probably also a good example of the shock absorber effect that you mentioned earlier).

brandon429 said:
look at this example below of a misread. old cycling science does not go into test misreads, it only functions on an alert subjective mode each umpire randomly chooses to honor. I see cycling science as a set of rules that governs the accuracy of test kits, not the other way around.

I didn't read the whole thread, but I'm not sure that I saw a misread. Although your impressions about how many people interpret API's ammonia test results might not be wrong. API measures total ammonia, not free ammonia. So while it's still showing an elevated level of total ammonia (making no claims about it being either safe or unsafe), the NH3 level might actually be safe for fish (less than 0.020 ppm of NH3, per Seneye). We'd really have to know the pH level to be able to make any kind of safety assessment when measuring total ammonia.

The nice thing about Seneye, and to a lessor extent Seachem Ammonia Alert, is that they read NH3 versus NH3 + NH4. It saves some work in computing free ammonia and making a call about safety levels. I agree that there are all sorts of wild claims about ammonia, like stalled cycles. But of course you're right, the nitrogen cycle doesn't stall. But that doesn't mean elevated levels cannot occur (at least temporarily).

brandon429 · Nov 29, 2022

that link is buried within Dr. Reefs bottle bac thread, 99 pages or so I'll let u search. here's the thread, I predict its somewhere between pages 1 and 35

*it was neat to be able to chat w Dr. Tim himself.

we also discussed how marine cycling bacteria get into tanks when they're not dosed

it isn't via aerosol most commonly thought, he tells us the prep water/the TAP water if applicable can cross vector in cycling bac. excellent discussion, I tried to really learn detail from him. coming up

Bacteria in a bottle, Myth or Fact

Call me old school, back in the day we placed a deli shrimp in a tank to kick start the cycle. When tank reached 1.5-2 ppm ammonia we pulled it out and waited sometimes weeks to months for bacteria to colonize and drop ammonia and nitrites down to 0 to make tank safe for livestock. With recent...

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brandon429 · Nov 29, 2022

I'm helping you look bc its fun reminiscing

this was a standout snippet

Emeyer is aquabiomics.

this is Eli/aquabiomics very very very very skeptical that bottle bac works, unless I'm misreading

"Emphatically yes, it needs to be tested. Because the great majority of posts supporting the notion that these products do something are not logically sound.

If you add a bottle to your tank, and are able to successfully establish a tank, this proves absolutely nothing. I can add a glass of DI water from my four year old's purple sippy cup to a new tank, then successfully establish a tank. By this same logic, purple sippy cups help a tank cycle faster."

bottled bacteria turned out to work stellar well, across all brands. concentrating water bacteria and packaging them in water and then selling them to be put into tanks of water works: that's amazing

from page five. will find Dr T soon

brandon429 · Nov 29, 2022

Dr. Tim starts on page six. you could tell I was milking the info all I could for that interval, he's chatted a few times since then but not much. very busy I'd suppose.

brandon429 · Nov 29, 2022

there are only two things Dr. Tim ever said that I thought didn't line up with a very large pattern set of tanks online

1. that tank water doesn't have transmissible cycling bacteria, from the video posted to youtube on his cycling method (we then proceeded to cycle up a 200 gallon all dry start reef, no bottle bac no feed, merely by soaking it in old tank water for 20 days. then it carried a full reef bioload after oxidation proof testing using salifert)

the bacteria came only from the contaminated water/ I believe the distinction is this: technically, nitrifying strains don't swim but they're clearly transmissible, and found in tank water, and its likely via the same rafting substrate we see in anyone's decent ID microscope pic of a drop of saltwater from a tank. the bacteria are hapless riders on flotsam--they wedge into new crevices as primary settlers in the new tank, set up shop fast. much faster than a truly unassisted cycle, which is page 98 onward of Dr. Reef's thread and in spite of the trolling in place against Steven's fine work.

and

2. that nitrite has any factor in a marine display tank cycle, or would ever reach suppressive or toxic levels in a marine display cycle given all manner of variance we see owners attempt. Nitrite measure and response is a heavy factor in his method, I'm going on seven years having not one single cycling reef tank ever react to it, and when they post test readings about nitrite, I try and get them to stop/so we can break the focus

I find nitrite impacts to be so vastly overstated to the masses it's a real cliffhanger to me why a rather official and consulted ruleset in cycling paints it that way. no toxicity found, not for any organism, not for any aspect of display reefing. When/who is going to inform this hobby that nitrites aren't needed to be factored/Randy already tried in 2006.