Safe to add Clownfish?

[Sector001]

Been cycling Waterbox Cube 20 for about 9 days. Lights off and skimmer off.

Seachem Seed & Dr Tim's Ammonia

 

Last test parameters are:

 

Ammonia 0.5 ppm

Nitrite 0.5 ppm

Nitrate 5.0 ppm

pH 8.0

Salinity 1.025 d SG

Tank Temp. 78 degrees

 

Current filtration:

1st media chamber: filter sock and Reef Glass Nano Skimmer

2nd media chamber: filter floss & MarinePure 1.5-Inch Sphere Bio-Filter Media (going to add Ultimate Refugium Starter Pack tomorrow, containing 5280 Pods three species live copepod blend, OceanMagik Live phytoplankton to keep them fed, and Live Clean macroalgae Chaeto) will have

NanoGlo LED).

 

I also have about 15 lbs. of Caribsea Life Rocks shapes in the tank.

 

So, the big question is...am I safe to add a small clownfish and very small clean up crew?

 

Thanks-in-Advance,

John

 

 

[j.falk]

No...you want 0 on both the ammonia and nitrite.  When both of those read 0, you know your tank is cycled and it's safe to add livestock.

[Sector001]

thank you j.falk.

 

I thought it would be there by now, I guess it's gonna take longer.

 

Damm

You don;t think a clown would survive and help push the cycle along?

[Clown79]

Until the cycle is done, its not safe nor humane to add a fish.

9 days, did you see ammonia rise any higher than 0.5? You want to see 1.5-2ppm process in 24hrs before you know the cycle is done.

 

A cycle can take 4 plus weeks with dry rock.

[j.falk]

4 hours ago, Sector001 said:

Damm

You don;t think a clown would survive and help push the cycle along?

Nope...you'll be putting it into water that will basically poison / burn it and potentially kill it.  Never add livestock while the tank is mid cyle.  That should be rule number one for new tank setups.

 

Last week there was a guy over on Reef2Reef that put a pair of Wyoming White clowns in a new tank mid cycle...both of them were dead within 2 days.  Don't gamble with your livestock...a little patience will save you a lot of heartache and money in the long run.

 

If you want to speed up the cycle, dump more bottled live bacteria into the tank or add some cured live rock.  The sooner the bacteria gets in there and gets established and breaks down the ammonia, the sooner your cycle will be done.  

[Sector001]

Thanks totally agree.

 

Been dosing with Seachem seed 10ml fisrt day and 5ml following days with 4 drops of Dr Tims Ammonia for the past 11 days.

 

Should I continue that schedule until cycle is complete?

[j.falk]

Sorry...I don't set up my tanks using the bacteria / ammonia method so I wouldn't know.  

 

Being an impatient person myself, I set up my tanks to have as much bacteria added into my aquarium at one time so that I can get my livestock added as soon as possible.  That means using well established live rock to seed the dead rock, double dosing on bottled bacteria for the first week, using live sand, adding pods, etc...

[mcarroll]

On 9/10/2020 at 9:25 PM, j.falk said:

Nope...you'll be putting it into water that will basically poison / burn it and potentially kill it.

I wish folks could cite what ppm/pH/temp actually is of concern.....but it seems like nobody actually knows.

 

Even Sustainable Aquatics' white paper on acclimation, which talks more about ammonia issues with fish than any other source I can think of, only seems to be worried about levels of ammonia that are ridiculously high....like 8 or 14 ppm.  (They don't specifically address "low levels" unfortunately.)

 

They do, however, point out that ammonia is a complicated topic, and that "high speed fish" like Tuna have really thin gill walls (high performance) which makes then very susceptible to ammonia....whereas more sedentary fish (like we keep) tend to have thicker gill walls.  (Read it, they mention lots of other things too.)

 

Anyway, I don't think ammonia is as straightforward as we tend to make it out to be.  Oddly, it doesn't seem like low ammonia levels have been well-studied...or for whatever reason if there is available research on the topic, it has been escaping me.  🤷‍♂️   IMO we hold an assumption which is not completely true that ammonia = death.

 

 

[mcarroll]

Well, I say that and look what I turn around and find for the first time on Google Scholar:

Dogmas and controversies in the handling of nitrogenous wastes: Is exogenous ammonia a growth stimulant in fish?

 

Then you say:  "Wait.  What?!"

 

Yes, you read correctly.  Read on.

 

Quote

Traditionally, waterborne ammonia is considered a toxicant that decreases productivity in aquaculture. However, several recent studies have suggested, but not proven, that growth of salmonids might actually be stimulated by chronic exposure to very low levels of ammonia.

If that isn't the opposite of what we hold as true, I don't know what is.

 

LOL.  Life is funny sometimes.

 

Still not quite a direct answer for my question, but it doesn't seem to point to the "ammonia = death" conclusion.

 

 

But notably:

Quote

There were no treatment-related mortalities. The average [ammonia] measured was 6.6±0.6·μmol·l–1 (N=27) for the control tanks, 88.7±2.4·μmol·l–1 (N=14) for the low ammonia treatment group, and 198.5±6.2·μmol·l–1 (N=28) for the high ammonia treatment group, respectively, which were reasonably close to the nominal values of 0, 70 and 225·μmol·l–1.

Correct me if wrong, but I think these conversions work for those ammonia levels...

 

200 µmol/L of ammonia would be about 4 ppm.  

I think 88 µmol would be about 1.3 ppm.  

And 6µmol would be very close to zero at .0004 ppm.

 

So even at 4 ppm there was no mortality.

 

Here's another quote from the Discussion section:

Quote

To put the levels used here in toxicological perspective [the mid-level ammonia concentration of around 1.3 ppm] at pH·7.6 is approximately 50% of the US EPA criteria chronic concentration (CCC) and about 9% of the criteria maximum (i.e. acute) concentration (CMC) for salmonids.

 

and this...

 

Quote

Ammonia, often viewed as the fish farmer’s enemy, may actually be a friend if carefully managed.