Unexplainable Very High Ammonia! Help!

lakee911

lakee911

New member
I did a 30Gal (25%) water change last night. When I was through I checked the Ammonia and it was 1.0ppm! :mad: I tested all of my water, RO water, storage water, etc. All of it was clean! I used two different kits and did the test multiple times. ( added Ammo-Lock...didn't know what else to do. I wasn't reading it wrong. Tested this morning still high.

I'm taking water sample to LFS today.

My ammonia was high a few days prior, or at least I thought so. Whenever I'd take it to LFS, they'd tell me it was slightly above zero. I might have been reading the test wrong though because I wasn't waiting the 5min or was waiting too long and the first three bars (0, 0.25 and 0.5 all look similiar to me). (This time it was obviously green). I had been doing some large water changes. I did a 25Gal, 16Gal and 30Gal water change in the past week. Here's my previous thread:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=760269

I was only doing the water change last night to get the nitrates down. I'm really confused. I've been changing water like crazy. All my water I change with is testing clean.

Ammonia: 1.0+ppm
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 100+
pH: 8.2
Salinity: 1.022
Temp: 78-79

This is a FOWLR tank set up for a year and moved in early December.

I'm getting desperate. I need to get these Nitrates down and find out where this Ammonia is coming from. I've got a crushed coral substrate. Think this might be causing trouble? I vacuum it where ever I can reach when I do water changes, but when we moved the tank it was pretty dirty.

Help!

I'm getting discouraged. I've sunk so much time and money into this and I'm stuck with this problem. :(
 
how many fish do you have in there? You nitrates are extreamly high, i'm sure the crushed coral is adding to the nitrates. The amm could be caused by something that died and you didn't notice or mabey by overfeeding.
 
When I bought this tank used I didn't have a choice in the fish--they were going to be moved across country if I didn't take them.
2 Blue Green Chromis, 2 skunk cleaner shrimp, Yellow Watchman Goby, Flagfin Angel, Moorish Idol, Emerald Crab, Turbo snails and hermit crabs. I'm trying to provide the best care I can for them.
 
I did lose a cleaner shrimp a few weeks ago and ammonia never went up. Never found him. Can't imagine this woud be from that. I'm careful not to overfeed.

Please take a look at that thread I posted about troubles I was having earlier.

Thx,
Jason
 
Well that actually isn't that bad, only 4 fish in a 120 gal, i woudn't add any more though. What kinda of fileration do you have on it? refugium, skimmer ect? I would get the crushed coral out of there and replace it with a shallow sand bed or a DSB.
 
Ya, bio load is small. I'm not planning on adding anything more until I can get this stabalized.

I have a refugium that has a DSB and 10 mangroves. The DSB is only a few weeks old so its not really doing much yet. I've removed my canister--was afraid it was highly contributing to the nitrates. I'm running an EV-120 skimmer.

I've wondered about that crushed coral. How do I replace it with a DSB?
 
Well I would probally do a shallow sand be since you already have a remote DSB. With replacing the crushed coral there are a few ways to do it. One way is to slowly pull out a little bit of the cc and add sand to replace it, over a long peroid of time you will change it 100%, another way is to totally switch it out but leave a few cupfulls of crushed coral in there to seed it. The second way would be best IMO anyways, but be ready to do alot of water changes and keep up on your water testing untill your bacteria populations come back up. As for your nitrates now i would do a 50% water change when changing the cc to sand also.
 
Hi Amber,
Thanks for the advice. I've suspected this all along that the CC substrate isn't as good as sand, but the previous owner used it, why didn't he have problems? Think that things getting stired up in the move is making it worse?What kind of sand do you recommend?

Do you think I can stabalize my tank for the time being so I do not have to immdiately worry about the sand?

Thanks,
Jason
 
sounds to me like you may have lost something and not noticed unless your really over feeding. I have heard the best way to switch out is to remove all the CC and then take part of it and rinse it in salt water to remove the detritus. Then put it into some type of mesh bag(small enough that it cant get out) After you add all your sand sit the bags of CC down into the sand to seed it.
 
um there are a bunch of sand out there, there isn't really any right one, if you know what i mean. If I were you i would probally do the livesand in a bag, so that extra bacteria will get added to your system.

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/Product/Prod_Display.cfm?pcatid=7318&N=2004+113554

You could also do the playsand from home depot, or just fiji, but you wont get the extra stuff. Either way i would do about 100-120 lbs if your going with a shallow sand bed
 
Ok. Thanks. I'll look into the sand thing. I've gotta get my tank somewhat stabalized though in the mean time. I'll keep up with water changes as much as I can.

Thanks for the help.
 
Tank is in trouble. Did a 55Gal water change yesterday. Had no choice but to use conditioned tap water.

Ammonia: 1.0
Nitrite: 2.0
Nitrate: 80
pH: 8.2
Salinity: 1.023

Dunno what happened--Just need to fix it. Appears tank is cycling again. I've got 25Gal of RO water at home that I'll mix up with an equal part of conditioned tap water and hope that it'll bring this down.
 
Maybe slightly, but not too much. Everyone is still eatting, though my flagfin was a little sluggish this morning. Surprisingly, everyones colors don't look too bad either.

I had some Ammo Lock in there, but the reputable LFS suggested not adding because it might increase the amount of time it takes for the Ammonia to break down and draw out the length of the cycle.

Ideas? Suggestions? I'm going to be adding some Chaeto tomorrow to help (minimal maybe).
 
In one of your earlier posts you indicated that you had tested your tap water but the results looked the same as your tank water tests except you also indicated there was nitrite. Are those the params for the water you've been using as change water? The ammo lock can produce a false ammonia reading. The only thing thats going to take care of the ammonia is time, water changes will help keep it in check while the bacteria in your LR and sand bed or in your case CC bed take care of it.
 
Just going back it looks like the tank was just resetup in December, and all of the fish were immediatly added back into the tank? This would indicate that the tank is cycling and with the extra bioload its going to be a long cycle. You could see if your LFS will temporarily house the fish until the cycle is complete or you could move them to a QT tank if you have something of a suitable size. There is a product which is supposed to help minimize the cycle let me go through some old threads and see if I can find it. As I recall it wasnt cheap but it may help.
 
I actually do not have my tap water test conditions on hand--could reference which post it was though as I'm unable to search, The tap water is definately better than what I was taking out of the tank. The post above was what my tank is testing at now. Before I got my RO unit, I did very few small changes with conditioned tap water in early december (although the previous owner stated he always used tap water).

I hoped that the Ammo Lock was artificially inflating the ammonia reading but I put a couple drops into 5ml of fresh and saltwater and tested it clean, so I'm not sure it is.

LFS thought maybe something wiped out my beneficial bacteria though we couldn't figure out what. I wish I could some how jump start it. C'mon Ammonia, get the move on!

Thx!
 
Yes it was moved and resetup in early Dec. Only then was I plaqued with High Nitrates. Ammonia was zero or negligible for over a month, so I'm not sure its cycling from that. I'd appreciate it if you could find out what product that was.

Thanks.
 
You have been adding Ammo-lock. These types of products can result in false positive readings on ammonia tests.

You might not have any ammonia
 
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