Ammonia

[Chuckyyy87]

setup Biocube 32 gallon 
So what does this ammonia look like to y’all? Okay let me fist start by saying I’ve had an apparent ammonia spike, what brought this to my attention was a damsel acting really weird laying around breathing rapidly and my scooter bleeny the same but they was only 2 showing signs rip scooter blue damsel made full recovery but I checked params learned I had ammonia, nitrites and nitrates I don’t remember the exact numbers now this has been an ongoing battle for over a week now. The tanks been running since July 26th started it with live sand, live dry rock and bio sira bacteria along with 4 fish 2 clowns a cardinal and blue damsel one clown perished a few weeks later due to aggression I believe anyways after about 2 weeks of it being up I found a great deal on some established rock with hairy mushroom on it. I was showing tank being cycled before adding the additional rock and mushroom via api master kit so as it was going good I added more coral a green chromis and scooter bleeny this brings total of fish to 5 I also added cuc over the period as well the basics snails and crabs everything was good until roughly 2 weeks ago I bought an emarld crab and couple more snails and hermits 3 days later is when all hell broke loose and I found the 2 fish I mentioned above suffering and found empty snail shells which isn’t a surprise but just throwing that out there. After finding the 2 suffering fish I immediately did ammonia test and learned it was nearly 2.0ppm nitrite was .50 and nitrates was 60ppm! I’ve been doing wc like crazy since last Tuesday and have only been testing ammonia with api and Red Sea test kits any input is appreciated sorry if this is hard to understand I’m at work making this post lol

[seabass]

31 minutes ago, Chuckyyy87 said:

The tanks been running since July 26th started it with live sand, live dry rock and bio sira bacteria along with 4 fish 2 clowns a cardinal and blue damsel

That's a pretty heavy bioload to start, with just some BIO-Spira.  It's a good bottled bacteria culture, but you usually still have to build up the biofilter before adding that many fish.  We usually recommend fishless cycling to build up the biofilter on dry rock before adding such a bio-load.

 

Fishless cycling involves dosing NH4 up to 2 ppm, then waiting for it to drop to 0.25 ppm; then repeat until your tank can process 2 ppm of NH4 to 0.25 ppm within 24 hours.

 

31 minutes ago, Chuckyyy87 said:

I was showing tank being cycled before adding the additional rock and mushroom via api master kit so as it was going good I added more coral a green chromis and scooter bleeny this brings total of fish to 5

That's good if you didn't notice an ammonia spike with the first round of fish.  The additional rock could certainly have added an ammonia source, which in addition the two additional fish might have overwhelmed the biofilter.

 

31 minutes ago, Chuckyyy87 said:

After finding the 2 suffering fish I immediately did ammonia test and learned it was nearly 2.0ppm nitrite was .50 and nitrates was 60ppm!

High nitrate definitely confirms processing lots of ammonia.  Nitrate and nitrite aren't very toxic, so they are more or less just indicators of what's going on.  However, the high ammonia level is toxic to your fish.

 

I'd continue with the water changes and dose some more bottled bacteria to help process the ammonia.

[Chuckyyy87]

I heard that seachem stability was a good go to I don’t find this to be true after a week of dosing daily I also heard vibrant was a good choice again no evidence proves this to be true either after dosing 

5 minutes ago, seabass said:

That's a pretty heavy bioload to start, with just some BIO-Spira.  It's a good bottled bacteria culture, but you usually still have to build up the biofilter before adding that many fish.  We usually recommend fishless cycling to build up the biofilter on dry rock before adding such a bio-load.  Fishless cycling involves dosing NH4 up to 2 ppm, then waiting for it to drop to 0.25 ppm; then repeat until your tank can process 2 ppm of NH4 to 0.25 ppm within 24 hours.

 

That's good if you didn't notice an ammonia spike with the first round of fish.  The additional rock could certainly have added an ammonia source, which in addition the two additional fish overwhelmed the biofilter.

 

High nitrate definitely confirms processing lots of ammonia.  Nitrate and nitrite aren't very toxic, so they are more or less just indicators of what's going on.  However, the high ammonia level is toxic to your fish.

 

I'd continue with the water changes and dose some more bottled bacteria to help process the ammonia.

Would you recommend another bottle of bio spira?

[seabass]

4 minutes ago, Chuckyyy87 said:

I also heard vibrant was a good choice

No, Vibrant is an algaecide (despite its claims to be a bacteria culture).  While there might be certain conditions where Vibrant might be useful (like getting rid of bubble algae), it can be harmful to the biodiversity in your tank.

 

7 minutes ago, Chuckyyy87 said:

Would you recommend another bottle of bio spira?

Yes, or something like Brightwell Microbacter7.  It should be for saltwater and contain nitrifying bacteria.

[Chuckyyy87]

9 minutes ago, seabass said:

No, Vibrant is an algaecide (despite its claims to be a bacteria culture).  While there might be certain conditions where Vibrant might be useful (like getting rid of bubble algae), it can be harmful to the biodiversity in your tank.

 

Yes, or something like Brightwell Microbacter7.  It should be for saltwater and contain nitrifying bacteria.

I wonder if that could have killed off my good bacteria since I dosed some for a small bacterial bloom a few days prior to this whole event?? It was suggested by another reefer to do 

[seabass]

I don't really know about that.  However, the bacterial bloom might have been an initial indication of the problem.

[Chuckyyy87]

Okay so just trying to get this straight lol you suggest a bottle of beneficial bacteria and test ammonia until it shows 0ppm correct?

[seabass]

Yep.  Also keep doing frequent water changes.  After an ammonia spike, you might notice that NH4 hovers a bit under 0.25 ppm for awhile.  While this is still elevated, this normally doesn't cause visible signs of distress.  So a definite 0.0 ppm might not be absolutely necessary.

[Chuckyyy87]

I did a 40% wc last night going to test today when I get home to see if it’s decreased or raised any 

[Chuckyyy87]

23 minutes ago, seabass said:

Yep.  Also keep doing frequent water changes.  After an ammonia spike, you might notice that NH4 hovers a bit under 0.25 ppm for awhile.  While this is still elevated, this normally doesn't cause visible signs of distress.  So a definite 0.0 ppm might not be absolutely necessary.

If I do wc after dosing bacteria wouldn’t that remove the exact thing I’m dosing for ? 

[seabass]

Yeah, some.  So do the water change, then dose bacteria.  Established nitrifying bacteria reside on the hard surfaces (like rocks, sand, equipment, tank walls), so water changes don't usually remove a lot of nitrifying bacteria.  However, when dosing, this bacteria is still in the water column, so water changes will export some of it.

[Chuckyyy87]

So I got some api quick start i unfortunately couldn’t get anything else will it work with same benefits as bio spira ? I’ve used it many time on fresh setups but never salt

[seabass]

35 minutes ago, Chuckyyy87 said:

I’ve used it many time on fresh setups but never salt

It says it's for fresh or saltwater, which I feel should help (definitely worth a try).  I believe that BIO-Spira is just for saltwater (which I'd think would be better).  I'm pretty sure that the bacteria strains are different.

 

TBH, I'm not sure how you bottle a saltwater and freshwater bacteria culture together.