ammonia spike after adding tangs

[Devin_23]

Ammonia was at zero then i put a blue hi jumpeppo and yellow tang in and today it is at .50 ppm nitate jumped to 5 ppm nitrites are 0 ph 8.4 salinity 1.025 feed every other day how do i lower ammonia

 

[Mike Ordner]

Lower ammonia with amquel. Sounds like your tank is still cycling and you added fish too soon. I would remove those fish and put them in a stable tank until cycle is finished. If you do use amquel you will get false readings (false 0) from standard test kits for ammonia and can be hard to tell when cycle is finished.

 

[Devin_23]

Tank was established over a year when i got it ive had it three weeks and the levels have been perfect the whole time

 

[SushiGirl]

Moving a tank messes up the parameters. At the very least, you added too many fish at once. How big is this tank?

 

[Crazyfingerz]

Tangs create a lot of waste. So the 2 tangs will create a whole lot a mess. your biological filter probably cannot handle the excess waste being produced so quickly. Add some more live rock to aid in filtration..

 

[Devin_23]

Tank is 120 with a 30 sump/fuge only fish ive added are a clown afterp the first week of the parameters staying the same which they were from day one and the two tangs last night the tank already had a clown 3and blue damsels and two shrimp and CUC corals are kenya tree torch zoas mushroom frogspawn gsp

 

[bertoni]

I'd add some Amquel or Prime ASAP and watch the ammonia level for a while. Stopping all the feeding for a day would be a good idea, too, IMO.

It's possible that something large in the live rock might have died, or that the test kit has failed. If it doesn't read zero on the RO/DI water, I'd suspect the kit.

 

[Devin_23]

alright thanx for the replies also i tested again this morning ammonia showed 0 nitrates showed 20 again i tested my rodi for ammonia just to see if test kit was right and the first time i did it it was 0 the second time it was 2 so just for the heck of it i tested tank water with a jungle brand ammonia test strip and it showed 0 so ive got a 0 reading on tank water from two different tests and a 0 and 2 reading on rodi from the same test (api) nitrates showed 20 on both the rodi showed 0

 

[SushiGirl]

Sounds like the bacteria caught up overnight, but it's something you'll have to watch each time you add new fish.