HELP!! Ammonia level spiked after dead snail

[mihkey]

Everything looked fine last night, and I moved my snail to the rock because that is really the only place algae is. Today, I noticed it was still in the same spot all day but I thought I saw it move.. I went to check it today, and it came out of the shell and smelled horridly. I tested the water and everything was normal except for the ammonia which was reading at about 0.50. I love my clownfish dearly and do not want anything to happen to them! Do I do a water change or add chemicals? I only have stress + and quick start currently, so please help!
-Ashley(Mikey’s gf)

 

[brandon429]

No way to tell. Ammonia didn't rise to kill it though.

 

[mihkey]

No way to tell. Ammonia didn't rise to kill it though.

What testing kit should I buy?

 

[Pickle_soup]

Your tank is as cycled as it can be

The troubleshoots prior were 100% wrong. You are beyond cycling since your rock brought in the required bacteria

Moving rocks among tanks doesn't cause dieoffs nor loss of bacteria, that's old cycling science which is wrong and our hobby didn't know this until the advent of digital ammonia testing.

How are you going to say that? Just cause you to add two rocks, which look like Marco Rocks, which are not very porous in the first place, will make the cycle complete. Clearly, the cycle is not done since they might have had that spike from the a dead snail in a relatively large tank for that amount of animals. Mihkey, check for Nitrites and Nitrates in your tank. And keep an eye on the ammonia. Don't just assume that the cycle is over. I added way more LR to my 20 and ammonia spiked up to .5. The LR and sand in my QT is about 13 years old. It was sitting in my main tank for that long.

 

[Pickle_soup]

What testing kit should I buy?

I personally like Salifert, but they are a bit pricey. I find them to be more accurate than APIs, but I have nothing against APIs. Ideally, you can have to different brands to see for consistency between the results.

 

[BigMonkeyBrain]

Even a 30-day old tank can handle a rise in ammonia as the nitrifying bacteria can reproduce and almost double in 24-hrs. I would just check water flow over your rocks, and adjust flow if needed.

I have found in my years that it is impossible to over filter an aquarium. Having a few rocks or rock / substrate is cutting it very close to frequent spikes causing alarm. Anything you can add for nitrifying bacteria to colonize in an area with good flow helps, filter sponge on skimmer inlet / outlet, pot scrubbers in bottom of skimmer, etc,. really helps.


Probably happens !

 

[mihkey]

How are you going to say that? Just cause you to add two rocks, which look like Marco Rocks, which are not very porous in the first place, will make the cycle complete. Clearly, the cycle is not done since they might have had that spike from the a dead snail in a relatively large tank for that amount of animals. Mihkey, check for Nitrites and Nitrates in your tank. And keep an eye on the ammonia. Don't just assume that the cycle is over. I added way more LR to my 20 and ammonia spiked up to .5. The LR and sand in my QT is about 13 years old. It was sitting in my main tank for that long.

I test everything daily, and my nitrates and nitrites stay very low, basically non detective.

 

[brandon429]

you need to stop testing for ammonia in this system, or any display reef that has cycled as this one has. all you do is remove dead animals to control ammonia, it can't rise before death of animals, it's the most in-control parameter in reefing. simply don't own an ammonia test kit, the cheap ones just mislead you and there's no reason to own the $200 one for a param that self controls always. don't own a nitrite test either. = updated cycling science. old cycling science will drive you crazy chasing red herrings and false reads.

you can't have cycle issues with this tank.

 

[brandon429]

you will find it so helpful to know which parameters need testing for and which ones don't: oxygen, ammonia, nitrite/ check them right off/self correcting in any common reef tank setting. we do cycles without testing for ammonia now which is why your key wording in this post set off that little clue/skip cycle live rock moved from a pet store.


when it's dry rock/not live + bottle bac and some ammonia added we can do those too without any testing by waiting a certain number of days for the bacteria to set in that is already precalculated on any cycling chart's ammonia line: day 10-12. there aren't any cycling charts with an ammonia line extended beyond that for a reason...and your type of cycle circumvents that wait because someone already waited it out for you and sold it as live plus we can see the pigmentation differences on your live rock, it's not bone white like dry rock is.

your current fish and future ones still have a risk that's unrelated to cycling: skipping the disease preps by adding in fish directly from a pet store. see the disease forum stickies for how to reverse that when needed.


**if fish get problems, it's not your cycle that did it.

 

[BigMonkeyBrain]

At times I assume and generalize. I assume you know your special use case ( sps & animals ). I also assume you have read and have certain water parameters you like to maintain.

There have been a vast number of good or great nitrifying water filters, ( diy, wet/dry, undergravel etc,. ) that could handle a very large stocking load. The special aquarium use cases called them nitrate factories. If a filter used for nitrifying ( AOA & AOB ) is good and working, it will produce nitrate.

I cannot see the need to dose nitrate as many of these filters will do the job and can be tuned !

Probably happens !

 

[Pickle_soup]

I test everything daily, and my nitrates and nitrites stay very low, basically non detective.

During the cycle, you don't need to test it daily but keep an eye on ammonia. Once you start seeing some nitrates you will be through the cycle. Just cause you throw some rocks into the tank, don't think that cycle is over. There is a reason why we add livestock relatively slowly to the tank, to make sure that the bioload doesn't overwhelm your system. Keeping track of things like nitrates gives you an idea of where you are trending. The idea that things will magically fix themselves is ludicrous at best. I keep track of every measurement I take to see what exactly is happening with my tank. Weekly I run tests, chart it all, and see what I need to rectify. I will agree with Brandon, that once your cycle is over, nitrite tests are useless.

 

[Freenow54]

Everything looked fine last night, and I moved my snail to the rock because that is really the only place algae is. Today, I noticed it was still in the same spot all day but I thought I saw it move.. I went to check it today, and it came out of the shell and smelled horridly. I tested the water and everything was normal except for the ammonia which was reading at about 0.50. I love my clownfish dearly and do not want anything to happen to them! Do I do a water change or add chemicals? I only have stress + and quick start currently, so please help!
-Ashley(Mikey’s gf)

Clowns are super resilient. I accidentally dumped the cup of crap from my skimmer into my 40 gallon. 4 Fish died instantaneously. The clown survived. You have no problem

 

[brandon429]

here's where the ludicrous statements came from: ten years of work thread collecting and actual reading.

Does anyone dose ammonia and/or how would one try?

So, after an interesting discussion on nitrate dosing and looking at my Walt Disney coral and seeing it slightly less colorful than I have seen it in others tanks, I have decided I want to learn about and then try dosing ammonia instead of buying 20 damsels. Nitrate additives I see abound and...

www.reef2reef.com

-all ammonia events resolve in under 30 mins (tracked by seneye, not api, note that detail)

find me one tank on there dosing way more ammonia than this tank saw that was not self resolved in ~10-15 as stated. Pickle, have you yourself ever actually seen a digital nh3 ammonia test load before that post? if not, I can understand your skepticism at updated cycling science.

the ratio of live rock to volume and stock rate is pretty much repeated across tanks. so is the ammonia resolve rate. this is updated cycling science, that ammonia behaves the same across tanks even if we don't own the $200 test kit. we can draw from those that do, and post there. this system uses slightly less live rock than average, but then again the bioload is scaled down and the dilution is scaled up to norm, hence this tank never had an original ammonia control issue. it had one dead snail, and upon removal, it's ammonia was resolved very fast. test kits will continue to lag behind because they're not seneye, and because they're involved as the most misreading test kit brand of all time usually due to user error (reports nh4 vs nh3 or actual test errors/didn't wait long enough to render the reading etc)

 

[brandon429]

this analysis isn't just to beef back and forth with reefers

the application of updated cycling science or the rejection of it drastically influences enjoyment of the hobby, knowing what to not test and knowing what to truly care about (enacting disease preps that have been skipped) completely determines the safety of these fish. old cycling science has them adding bacteria to a system with no more room to house bacteria...new cycling science saw that they care about the fish yet did the #1 thing destined to kill them within eight months (stocked from a pet store without any quarantine as well as all upcoming new additions)

these fish aren't in the safe zone yet, but old cycling science doesn't care about that part its only design is to sell sell sell sell sell bottle bac over and over. if there was a cycling problem here the OP would have to add more surface area not more bacteria. this degree of surface area is just fine, a few pounds of cured live rock runs a tankload of fish and we're not even at that stocking rate yet.

read this thread

Has anyone done coral/inverts only and no fish at first?

Fish seem to be the main cause of disruption in a display tank, given the current circumstances in the hobby with pests (ich, velvet, parasites, etc.). I have been in this hobby for 18 years, and the amount of pests that are showing up lately is much more (could also be the fact that we have...

www.reef2reef.com

notice how they stock in an order of ops totally reversed to this thread, to pretty much any reef on the site? that's how to beat fish disease. we're all trained to add fish first, then stock dirty items all the months after, and that's why any reading of the disease forum shows pages and pages of dying fish in need of remediation. old cycling science doesn't know to incorporate fish disease as the primary concern, it can't make money on that.