Emergency advice needed

[nothingfishy]

So I am currently treating my seahorse/reef tank with cupramine. All coral and inverts have been moved to a seperate tub, and rock and sand has been removed. I left about 6 lbs of rock, and a bunch of pvc pieces for surface area. (80 gallon tank, plus 30 more in sump)

I have a seachem alert badge, which is now showing .05, alert level. I have been adding in stability,.

I will do a 20 gallon change tonight, roughy 1/5 of total volume. Is .05 acceptable in qt like atmosphere?

I can't use prime or anything with cupramine.

Thanks

 

[Spar]

really no ammonia is acceptable. but i am not familiar with any testkits that go as low as .05... are you sure it isn't .5? generally testkits read at increments of .25 or so.

you really shouldn't have any rock in there at all. it will absorb the copper making it difficult at best to maintain the right levels. regardless that it is very little rock compared to gallons.

best thing you can do is just keep up with water changes and add in bacteria (stability) to help. hopefully it will go down to 0 soon.

 

[Mishri]

.5 wont kill your fish, it's not good though. Whenever i see that I aim for 50% water changes. Do as much as you possibly can.

And yes, I could not maintain my levels of cupramine with rock in the tank. I'd get it right, then test it 6 hours later and it was 0 again. then I'd get it right, then 0 again, then get it right, then it was at .2.. just would not get stable. Plus, you can't re-use that rock with inverts now. (Maybe you have a plan for it).

I'd pull the remaining rock and add mechanical filtration. (like a canister filter or a good HOB filter like aquaclear - get one rated for 150+ gallons, or 2 rated for 75-80).. just don't run the carbon they come with ofcourse

Another option is adding a bunch of bioballs to your sump... the sponges and bio-media these filters come with are far better than PVC for giving the bacteria a place to live, pvc is too smooth, you have hardly any surface area now. Once you add a good filter I expect you'll see ammonia dropping quickly.

 

[nothingfishy]

It's not .5, but .05, as in 5 hundredths.

 

[Spar]

It's not .5, but .05, as in 5 hundredths.

what testkit are you using? i suppose I wouldn't personally worry about .05, but regardless you should see it go down to 0 as the bacteria starts doing its work and multiplying.

 

[nothingfishy]

It's the seachem alert badge, supposedly only kit that can distinguish between cupramine as ammonia. My api kit shows .5, but I have read they can not tell the difference between cupramine and ammonia.

 

[Spar]

not sure i had ever looked closely enough at those badges to see that it does indeed say .05, followed by .2. interesting, but nice it reads that low.

my only concern is whether that .05 is really a range of .05-.19. but i assume you could see the color indicator darkening accordingly if it were higher.

best thing you can do is just watch how your fish are reacting. if you start seeing heavy breathing and lethargic behavior, then you may need to get things in check.

 

[andy01748]

The Seachem badge measures ammonia (NH3) only, where the test kits measure both ammonia and ammonium (NH4+), hence the difference between the badge and test kits. The ammonia/ammonium ratio is dependent on pH, which ammonia decreasing with lower pH. Ammonia is just a small fraction of the ammonium concentration and the typical pH of aquariums.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-02/rhf/

This is why you can have an ammonia issue when you open fish that have been shipped in sealed containers. When you open the bag and the accumulated CO2 starts to equilibrate with the surrounding air, the small increase in the pH will cause an increase in ammonia/ammonium ratio. Ammonium is considered much less toxic than ammonia.