Ammonia in Established and Cycled Tank

[theMaroonClown]

I have a reef tank and was setting up a QT used a piece of rock that i had in the sump to cycle the QT tank left it running for a couple of weeks and tested last week at 0 for everything. I since have added a fish in the QT tank. and have gotten an ammonia spike I have done water changes to lower it with no luck. I then began to think maybe it was the test kit and tested my display also. In which it also has .50 ppm ammonia. My display has been cycled for since about September. Filter socks are changed every 2 to 4 days. I am running no skimmer and a refugium. I then went and got another test kit that I had laying around to double check if the first test was right and got the same reading back in both tanks at .50 ppm. What could be the culprit for this I am feeding twice a day on the display and every other day in the QT. Please help as the fish in QT is a purple tang and would not like to lose it. I also will probably end up having to transfer all my fish to the QT as I saw my Tomini Tang have 1 white spot and have been seeing my Starry Blenny flashing and biting its tail.

 

[lpsouth1978]

Which test kits are you using? How old are they?

It is not unusual to have a small ammonia spike in a QT after adding fish, but it should be short lived if the tank was cycled with live rock. The display on the other hand, I have a hard time believing that a tank that was set up in September has ANY ammonia in it. I would guess that it is a faulty and/or expired test kit, or two. That, or you are using API test kits. The API test is notorious for giving faulty high readings of ammonia.

 

[theMaroonClown]

They are api test kits will go buy some salifert test kits tomorrow. Since I posted this I checked my TDS on my rodi which is zero and also took a test of the water with both the api test kits of the rodi water which ended up at zero. I used the api cause I had no issue using them when I was cycling my nano tank two years ago my buddies tanks but have always used better test kits such as Elos salifert geismann and Red Sea for things such as phosphate calcium nitrate and mg

 

[theMaroonClown]

Will be doing a water change tonight on QT to see if I can dilute the ammonia down

 

[mcgyvr]

Quite normal for api test kits to read .25-.5 ammonia at all times..

 

[bertoni]

I think that sounds like a bad test kit, but you could test some distilled water as a sanity check.