Nano-Reef emergency tank

[Johnny Max]

I was given a lavender tank, some live rock and a fist full of cheato marcro algae. I set them up in a 20g new tank. Not cycled! Threw in a sponge filter and adding bacteria. Ammonia is hitting 2ppm. Plan a water change tomorrow if it keeps spiking. Worried about the little fish. 

[Tired]

I'd highly advise doing a water change now- that's already high and is potentially causing damage. 

 

How large is the tank, and how large is the fish? That chaeto should have brought in a decent bit of bacteria.

 

Any chance something is dying/rotting in there? How much are you feeding?

[Johnny Max]

It is a 20 long and the fish is under 2".

I was thinking all the live rock would be covered with bacteria too. It came right out of a very established tank. Minimal feeding as I monitor the spike. 

[seabass]

Did all that rock rubble come with the live rock?  Was the tank really cloudy after you set it up?  It seems like either die off from the rock (which might be possible if it was out of the water for awhile), or dead organic matter stirred up (maybe from the rock rubble).  If possible, I'd consider re-homing the fish while cycling.  

[Johnny Max]

Woke up at 3am and was worried. Tested the water again, the amonia had dropped to 0.5 ppm

Water cleared up. I got up and was going to do a water change, but it seems to be dropping pretty fast. I wonder if it was the addition og the nitrofying bacteria? I added two different brands I had onhand.

[seabass]

8 minutes ago, Johnny Max said:

I wonder if it was the addition og the nitrofying bacteria?

No doubt that helped.  Also, being from a mature tank, there was already a biological filter.  It was just temporarily overwhelmed.  With ammonia levels dropping, you are good to go.

 

That rock rubble will end up trapping a lot of detritus.  Have you considered sand instead?

[Johnny Max]

5 hours ago, seabass said:

...That rock rubble will end up trapping a lot of detritus.  Have you considered sand instead?

It is a thin layer of small shell fragment scattered over river sand. No deep cracks for stuff to be out of the reach of shrimp. My thoughts anyway. If they can't move all the tiny pieces around I can sift the bigger ones out, I added them for calcium. And I wanted the look too. It looks more natural to me. but I understand your point.

 

[mitten_reef]

I’ve seen a few of your posts now mentioning the use of river sand and fresh water rocks. So figured I’d chime in on that. 
 

my understanding is that proper saltwater substrate, aka “sand”, will allow for better buffering of tank ph and dKh balance. River sand has no carbonate in it. Same goes for rocks. Since you mentioned coming from fresh water background, I can see why you’d like the looks of them, there are some awesome fw tanks and aquascape out there
 

I’m just curious if you’ve looked into this in details for long term success, any case study?  “Looking natural” is understandably about personal preference, but reef tank requires more science for long term success than just throw rocks and sand in the tank. 

[Johnny Max]

2 hours ago, mitten_reef said:

I’ve seen a few of your posts now mentioning the use of river sand and fresh water rocks. So figured I’d chime in on that. 
 

my understanding is that proper saltwater substrate, aka “sand”, will allow for better buffering of tank ph and dKh balance. River sand has no carbonate in it. Same goes for rocks. Since you mentioned coming from fresh water background, I can see why you’d like the looks of them, there are some awesome fw tanks and aquascape out there
 

I’m just curious if you’ve looked into this in details for long term success, any case study?  “Looking natural” is understandably about personal preference, but reef tank requires more science for long term success than just throw rocks and sand in the tank. 

Thanks, some posts are of another tank. I collected rocks from the beach for the other tank, I believe they are fossilized coral.. This is a second tank, but it does have river sand, that is why I added the shell rubble. I think I will get a kids toy beach sand sifter and sift out any shells of size. The rock in the above tank was given to me and it is already covered with coralline. It is live rock. But I am planning to remove any shells in the sand of any size. I was going to put crushed oyster shell, but the gain was SO big.

[mcarroll]

Tank temp and pH are needed to calculate toxic ammonia levels, if you're curious.

 

If your pH was 7.8 and temperature was 79ºF, you'd get a 0.0370 multiplier.  

 

0.5 ppm of ammonia • 0.0370 = 0.01865 ppm of un-ionized ammonia (ie toxic ammonia; aka NH3).  

 

So 0.5 ppm of total ammonia (your test result) translates to only 0.02 ppm of toxic ammonia under "typical tank conditions."

 

0.02 is well under the "worry range" of ≥ 0.05 ppm.

 

BTW, when you initially tested ammonia at 2.0 ppm, that would have given you a 0.0746 ppm level of toxic ammonia.  Not bad for what seems like a sky-high ammonia level.  Still only slightly over the "worry level", but a water change or other corrective would have been appropriate.

[Johnny Max]

On 4/11/2023 at 3:28 AM, seabass said:

No doubt that helped.  Also, being from a mature tank, there was already a biological filter.  It was just temporarily overwhelmed.  With ammonia levels dropping, you are good to go.

 

That rock rubble will end up trapping a lot of detritus.  Have you considered sand instead?

As soon as I got home, I removed 80% of the shell rubble. It actually looks better to me now.

I jumped into this tank way too soon! It is because I got stuff from local Reefers and got all excited.

This tank will be a soft (easy type) coral tank. I plan to use this tank to learn about testing, dosing, etc..

I currently only have $50 in this tank.

I plan to mainly do water changed with reef salt to keep giving the coral what they need, then work my way into testing & dosing everything they need.