NH3 and NH4, cycling a new 90 gallon

[brandon429]

agreed, I don't have anything to say those two measures are off. they may be on/ we need to see what the pH reads between a seneye + a calibrated probe across several tanks to know if they're as reliable as the nh3 meter portion. the first few times people posted their calibrated pH probe readings against the seneye I just basically ignored it for that use thereafter, maybe things have improved/ not sure. I don't own one myself but I like seeing what they report in online web posts. I believe those patterns hold the secret to future discoveries in reef tank cycling science.

feel free to add here any comparisons in pH from the device plus alternate pH testers you may have, we appreciate any seneye knowledge tidbits.

*if u ever get bored with the seneye down the road please consider contributing to our bucket list of bucket cycling proofs using it. Your meter will be calibrated after the tank is about a month old + some stocked items in place/ u may have to bring the trim setting down to ~.003 nh3 if it doesn't naturally drop there in a week or two but other than that using your main tank as the baseline you can then use that seneye to learn things about cycles that nobody knows yet:

Request for seneye owners to use their calibrated meters to conduct bucket reef experiments and change reefing.

these meters can be used by hundreds of people to generate new cycling science rules at a massive rate. let chatgpt pick up the results and you'll evolve reef tank cycling science tenfold. you have the meters you can already see using seneye on your home reef nh3 control isn't a concern re aim...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[SaltyShrimpy]

Ok, sure, you've convinced me. I'll dose around 1 PPM ammonia today and monitor it with the seneye.

I dosed what should have been a 1 PPM increase, based on my tank and sump volume. That was around 11 am (MST) and NH3 was pretty steady at 0.02 PPM. I saw an almost immediate increase to 0.027 PPM, which frankly is totally negligible. It's 7 thousandths of a part per million.

I waited a few minutes to make sure the 0.027 was steady and was not going to increase further, then took a total ammonia test with my salifert kit. To me it looks to be between 0.25 and 0.5 PPM.

About 15 minutes ago, the seneye reading decreased to 0.026.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I dosed what should have been a 1 PPM increase, based on my tank and sump volume. That was around 11 am (MST) and NH3 was pretty steady at 0.02 PPM. I saw an almost immediate increase to 0.027 PPM, which frankly is totally negligible. It's 7 thousandths of a part per million.

I waited a few minutes to make sure the 0.027 was steady and was not going to increase further, then took a total ammonia test with my salifert kit. To me it looks to be between 0.25 and 0.5 PPM.

About 15 minutes ago, the seneye reading decreased to 0.026.

What does the Seneye think the pH is?

 

[brandon429]

and Im curious how long it takes to get very close back to .02

thank you very much for posting this live time work.

 

[SaltyShrimpy]

and Im curious how long it takes to get very close back to .02

thank you very much for posting this live time work.

Seneye says PH is 7.88. My hydros X10 was supposed to be my redundant check for PH but it's having issues and I've had to open a support case. So I don't have another way to verify PH right now.


Right now NH3 is 0.019 PPM and looking at the chart it hit 0.02 about 40 minutes ago.

Based on all this data I picked up a pair of maroon clownfish and a coral banded shrimp. Other than clownfish aggression they seem to be doing great. No signs of environmental stress.

 

[brandon429]

Thank you so much for the feedback and post details!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Seneye says PH is 7.88. My hydros X10 was supposed to be my redundant check for PH but it's having issues and I've had to open a support case. So I don't have another way to verify PH right now.


Right now NH3 is 0.019 PPM and looking at the chart it hit 0.02 about 40 minutes ago.

Based on all this data I picked up a pair of maroon clownfish and a coral banded shrimp. Other than clownfish aggression they seem to be doing great. No signs of environmental stress.

0.02 ppm NH3 at pH 7.88 translates to about 0.6 ppm total ammonia. I personally would not add fish with this much ammonia, but I have no idea if the Seneye is accurate.

 

[brandon429]

I don't think that's where he's at though, it's lower than stated

Brand new meter not trim set yet as well. If it drops into thousandths soon then yes it may have been high. If it stays in hundredths daily for a while then it needs trim set into spec. Don't mess with trim settings just yet, wait 60 days

It went back to set point, that's cycle ability. Hovering and not going back to set point would be a problem and the fish + daily feeding will show it if there's inadequate surface area or bacteria.

But if these fish behave like every other cycle we can possibly find...

I have other threads available where it didn't go below .04 nh3 in a years old nano: no trim was imparted to tune the setup but we didn't need the setpoint; only the up/ down change test to know cycle status

New Cycle - Seneye vs API

Hello All, Have just started to cycle a new DD ReefPro 900. Am using Fritzzyme Fishless food and Turbo Start and am 2 days in. I have dosed twice with Fishless food on the back of the seneye readings which are as follows: But the API result seems to be showing a different story. I`ve seen a...

www.reef2reef.com

The years old nano ran baseline at .04

He needed to set the trim at .004 given the nanos age but that's not required to see cycle ability

 

[brandon429]

Can we get a full tank pic to see rock placement and layout

 

[SaltyShrimpy]

0.02 ppm NH3 at pH 7.88 translates to about 0.6 ppm total ammonia. I personally would not add fish with this much ammonia, but I have no idea if the Seneye is accurate.

This morning NH3 is down to 0.013 ppm. That's after the addition of two fish and a shrimp yesterday evening. I also tested total ammonia yesterday evening. The salifert kit is not easy to read. To me it seemed to fall somewhere between .25 and .5 PPM - It's definitely possible it was at 0.6 PPM as you say. The seneye will need trimmed, once the value has settled and is no longer moving for several weeks, I'll zero it out.

Randy with nothing but respect, I chose to trust in the brightwell process. Trusting their bacteria to do what they claim it does. I based this off literally several dozen forum posts and first person accounts of other people having great success with this method. In fact, with the 'new' and better bacteria products that have come out over the last few years, I was not able to find even one single example of a failure, that did not also have other aggravating circumstances.

This whole process relies on a couple things to work. First is directly adding live and aggressive nitrifying bacteria to consume the raw ammonia that is dosed to 2 PPM. All of the top products tell you that you are directly adding enough bacteria to have an instantly cycled tank (if they use live bacteria). Some use 'dormant' bacteria and that's supposed to take a few days for them to 'wake up'.

Second, they rely on NH4 being non-toxic to fish. They call to add some livestock once NH3 is at negligible levels, even if NH4 or 'total ammonia' is present. You are certainly correct that if there are major temp or PH changes, that NH4 can convert to NH3 and potentially cause a problem. But short of overdosing a PH-affecting product like Kalkwasser, any PH changes should be slow and gradual.

Probably most importantly, this is a temporary situation. It's necessary to add livestock to provide a source of ammonia, but the time frame where livestock and NH4 at elevated levels both exist in the tank is pretty short, a few days to a week or so.

The point of this type of quick cycle is not just about being able to add livestock sooner. It's a whole method. Using Brightwell products at least, in addition to the nitrifying bacteria, I also start dosing a cleaner bacteria that is a mix of strains, mostly anaerobic, that are supposed to outcompete nuisance algae and form a 'biofilm' on surfaces that keep the tank overall clean and shiny. There is a also a biofuel additive that feeds these bacterial cultures, allowing them to stay at elevated levels even when there are zero nitrates or phosphates.

I will keep folks informed about how well it all actually works, if you are interested. The above are their marketing claims, we'll have to see how well it actually does in practice. If it works as expected, I should be able to avoid the ugly stage altogether, or at least keep it very minimal and manageable.

And as a final note, it's a quite affordable system. For my relatively small 90 gallon tank, the two long term dosed products "Clean" and "biofuel" will cost a few dollars a month. They are dosed weekly, which is easy to do, or I can use a dosing pump to automate it.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I’m only commenting based on what the Seneye says about ammonia, and I have no reason at all to assume it is accurate.

I will note two things, however.

1. There have been several tests of bacteria in a bottle products, and some work very, very differently than others.

2. Company claims should always warrant skepticism, and we recently showed data to Brightwell that resulted in them needing to retract claims about one of their other products (Boost pH +).

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Here’s one of the comparisons of different bacteria in a bottle products:

Not all Cycling Bacteria are created equal. Who's who, and what do they need?

One Last update to the Biospira Temp extreme side quest (earlier results below) The Biospira sample that got a single "hard freeze" in 15mL centrifuge tube overnight in the freezer at 0F - actually ended up processing ammonia AND nitrite just fine, it was merely significantly delayed. See...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[SaltyShrimpy]

I’m only commenting based on what the Seneye says about ammonia, and I have no reason at all to assume it is accurate.

I don't really understand this automatic distrust of Seneye readings. Everything I've seen in my own experience, and most of what I've read including from Dana in this post:

Accuracy of Seneye

If it wasn’t $200, I would be testing it already for accuracy, precision, response time/hysteresis, etc. If I have fun with the Oxydator investigation (~1\10 the cost), I may join you in this rabbit hole. Might also try validating the other sensors as well. BRS Tv did the video testing the Par...

www.reef2reef.com

suggests that it's accurate. Much, much more accurate than any hobby grade tests, and close to on par with industrial lab grade equipment.

Sure, it needs tuning, but we are talking about thousandths or maybe at most hundredths of a PPM. Compared to literally every ammonia test kit on the market that measures at most 0.25 PPM, and without any real accuracy since it's dependent on interpretation of the sample color compared to the chart. Even the type of lighting in the room can throw that off.

To be fair, there are a lot of posts claiming the Seneye is completely useless junk. But in each case that I bothered reading through, it was user error plain and simple. There are two main things people don't seem to get about Seneye:

First, it only measures NH3. It will calculate NH4 based on temp and PH, but that is a calculation, not a direct measurement like it is for NH3. So anytime someone compares the Seneye reading to any other test kit, red sea, api, salifert etc. they say the seneye is junk because it's often lower. They don't understand the difference between measuring NH3 vs measuring TAM.

Second, the PAR meter does not account for parallax. The lens should be directly facing the light source in order to get accuracy. If you hold the meter parallel to the surface of the water, or the bottom of the tank, then it's accurate only when directly underneath the light source. It should be angled towards the light source when you're measuring the sides of the tank.

Once those two things are understood and accounted for, the Seneye is a remarkably capable instrument, especially considering the $200 initial and about $12.50 a month price tag.

 

[SaltyShrimpy]

Here’s one of the comparisons of different bacteria in a bottle products:

Absolutely true, not all products are equal, far from it. I had disastrous results myself, many years ago using an API product. I used this one based on BRS's recommendation - Not saying it's the best, but I think it's up there among the best. It certainly seems to have worked for me so far. I'm very curious to see longer term results, especially curious to validate their claim that it can minimize or in some cases eliminate the ugly stage.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I don't really understand this automatic distrust of Seneye readings. Everything I've seen in my own experience, and most of what I've read including from Dana in this post:

Accuracy of Seneye

If it wasn’t $200, I would be testing it already for accuracy, precision, response time/hysteresis, etc. If I have fun with the Oxydator investigation (~1\10 the cost), I may join you in this rabbit hole. Might also try validating the other sensors as well. BRS Tv did the video testing the Par...

www.reef2reef.com

suggests that it's accurate. Much, much more accurate than any hobby grade tests, and close to on par with industrial lab grade equipment.

Sure, it needs tuning, but we are talking about thousandths or maybe at most hundredths of a PPM. Compared to literally every ammonia test kit on the market that measures at most 0.25 PPM, and without any real accuracy since it's dependent on interpretation of the sample color compared to the chart. Even the type of lighting in the room can throw that off.

To be fair, there are a lot of posts claiming the Seneye is completely useless junk. But in each case that I bothered reading through, it was user error plain and simple. There are two main things people don't seem to get about Seneye:

First, it only measures NH3. It will calculate NH4 based on temp and PH, but that is a calculation, not a direct measurement like it is for NH3. So anytime someone compares the Seneye reading to any other test kit, red sea, api, salifert etc. they say the seneye is junk because it's often lower. They don't understand the difference between measuring NH3 vs measuring TAM.

Second, the PAR meter does not account for parallax. The lens should be directly facing the light source in order to get accuracy. If you hold the meter parallel to the surface of the water, or the bottom of the tank, then it's accurate only when directly underneath the light source. It should be angled towards the light source when you're measuring the sides of the tank.

Once those two things are understood and accounted for, the Seneye is a remarkably capable instrument, especially considering the $200 initial and about $12.50 a month price tag.

Lol

Either the Seneye is right and it is not recommended to add fish, or it is wrong and the fish addition is fine,

Both cannot be true. You seem to want it both ways.

No one that I have seen recommends adding fish if cycling still accurately shows 0.6 ppm total ammonia.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

If you read Brightwell’s own cycling recommendations, you are not done cycling with 0.6 ppm total ammonia present;

Brightwell Aquatics - MicroBacter QuikCycl

 

[SaltyShrimpy]

Lol

Either the Seneye is right and it is not recommended to add fish, or it is wrong and the fish addition is fine,

Both cannot be true. You seem to want it both ways.

No, the point you seem to be missing is folks demonstrating that it's safe to add fish when NH3 is negligible, even if NH4 is present. You repeatedly claim that you'd never add fish with any amount of ammonia present, and that's perfectly fine, if a bit old school. From what I can see, the new school of thought, and the basis around many of the newer and effective bacteria products, is that for the duration of initial cycle, it's safe to ignore NH4 as long as NH3 is negligible. That is a proven strategy, not "having it both ways".

So yes, Seneye is right that there are negligible amounts of NH3 in the tank. Or else the fish I added yesterday evening would be suffering if not already dead.

And my salifert test kit, which raises the PH of the sample until the NH4 all converts into NH3, is also right that (as of last night anyway) there was about .25 or .5 PPM TAM in the tank. Yes, both things can be true at the same time.

No one that I have seen recommends adding fish if cycling still accurately shows 0.6 ppm total ammonia.

Well that's been recommended by folks in this very thread. And it's very well understood that NH4 is not toxic to livestock. And, I mean, I'm doing it right now and it's working great.

Seachem Prime detoxifies ammonia by converting it all to NH4. The Fish-in with Prime cycling method uses every other day doses of Prime to detoxify NH3 and doesn't care about NH4 since it's not harmful to the fish. That's just one other example of specifically differentiating between NH3 and NH4.

 

[SaltyShrimpy]

If you read Brightwell’s own cycling recommendations, you are not done cycling with 0.6 ppm total ammonia present;

Brightwell Aquatics - MicroBacter QuikCycl

Brightwell's instructions don't mention total ammonia anywhere. They very generically just reference Ammonia. The differences between NH3 and NH4 are complex enough that they aren't going to try and explain it on the back of a bottle. The instructions on the back of the bottle have to be dumbed down enough that the least capable among us can reasonably follow along. And they also know that almost nobody has a testing method that can detect NH3 and NH4 separately. It's basically just folks who own a Seneye, or someone lucky enough to have access to lab grade equipment worth thousands.



Refer to these very forums where hundreds of tanks have been started by mixing saltwater, sand and dry rock, dumping in bacteria products, and immediately adding light to medium levels of livestock. Those tanks are not failing. This process works.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

No true, and this seems to be the crux of the confusion here. All of Brightwell’s numbers in that page are total ammonia, and in fact most everywhere else as well. Almost no one in the reefing community discusses free ammonia levels (except Seneye users) for a host of reasons, including they change hourly as the pH changes.

We can verify with Brightwell if you want, but look at it this way. If you add 1 ppm total ammonia and the pH is 7.8, the tank would be cycled instantly by your reasoning. You are still at 0.6 ppm total ammonia by the Seneye, and would only have converted half of the 1-2 ppm total ammonia Brightwell recommends adding for cycling .

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

No, the point you seem to be missing is folks demonstrating that it's safe to add fish when NH3 is negligible, even if NH4 is present. You repeatedly claim that you'd never add fish with any amount of ammonia present, and that's perfectly fine, if a bit old school. From what I can see, the new school of thought, and the basis around many of the newer and effective bacteria products, is that for the duration of initial cycle, it's safe to ignore NH4 as long as NH3 is negligible. That is a proven strategy, not "having it both ways".

So yes, Seneye is right that there are negligible amounts of NH3 in the tank. Or else the fish I added yesterday evening would be suffering if not already dead.

And my salifert test kit, which raises the PH of the sample until the NH4 all converts into NH3, is also right that (as of last night anyway) there was about .25 or .5 PPM TAM in the tank. Yes, both things can be true at the same time.



Well that's been recommended by folks in this very thread. And it's very well understood that NH4 is not toxic to livestock. And, I mean, I'm doing it right now and it's working great.

Seachem Prime detoxifies ammonia by converting it all to NH4. The Fish-in with Prime cycling method uses every other day doses of Prime to detoxify NH3 and doesn't care about NH4 since it's not harmful to the fish. That's just one other example of specifically differentiating between NH3 and NH4.

You are stating untrue things (the prime comments are false), and you are treating me as if i don’t understand the difference between NH3 and NH4+.

I am not going to spend any more time trying to convince you, but you may find it useful to read my ammonia article where I describe all of these things in detail, including discussing toxicity levels.

Ammonia and the Reef Aquarium by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com