Tank Downsize -> Ammonia???

[Johnson556]

-May 30th (Thursday) I began transferring contents from my 240G system to a Redsea Reefer. I used about 60-80lbs of 3 year old live rock and the aragonite from the larger system. I would siphon out the substrate and rinse it about 5 times with tank water to make it clean as possible. Once the scape was done I loaded the tank with the CUC and ran a chemiclean cycle for the next two days. Tank looked incredible once the lights where back on.

-June 1st (Saturday) I moved the tank into its final place and did a 100% water change with Tropic-Marin Bio-Actif, let everything settle for the next day

-June 2nd (Sunday) I added a bottle of bacteria, white tail bristle-tooth tang and my trio of Lyretail Anthias. I was hoping the added bacteria and established sand/rock would allow me to do so

-Today (June 4th) early AM I test ammonia just to see with an API test kit. Results where not good... Granted I'm not sure if I waited 5 or 10 minutes, the results still showed between .25-.5 PPM of ammonia

Is this possible/likely or are these test kits garbage? I've read that they often read ammonia when there is none. When I left everything seemed fine, inverts doing there thing and fish where swimming around normally last night.

What should my next move be, 50% water change? More bacteria? Remove the fish?

 

[jtl]

They are not very accurate.

 

[Johnson556]

They are not very accurate.

I hope so, however do you think there is ammonia present?

 

[Joel B.]

Probably. During any tank move your going to have a bit of an ammonia spike and possibly a mini-cycle. I recommend using something like AmGuard for a week or two until it settles. Note that AmGuard specifically will give false positives when using certain style ammonia test kits (like API) because of how the test functions.

 

[jtl]

I hope so, however do you think there is ammonia present?

0-.25 I would not be concerned about because iirc they can easily be off by .25 anything higher than that I would say shows the presence of ammonia.

 

[Johnson556]

I'm reading a few things, one API is garbage and constantly provides false positives and two biospira can cause false positives as well. Going to test with another kit when home

 

[brandon429]

Wanna see a trick where we can discern ammonia by you posting a full tank picture

Regardless of the test reading I’ll go with the pic based assessment post one if you can, taken just now

You have a twelve hour time frame you’re about to photograph, the end point of a day’s ammonia + bioload.

The rocks you moved over can process an already known amount of ammonia. That w be factored. Even if you lower dilution, the live rocks are enough.

Clarity of water in pic w be factored, position of the fish. Any down low rules it out. All fish up top means likely ammonia issues anything besides that is false positive.

If you ever want to move a tank again and never have to use bottle bac, ammonia testing, and never recycle here’s five years work in one thread. 100% of tank work turns out no cycle ever.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445

On your current tank there are adulterants that skew the testing in place now, testing isn’t that important now, post a pic w make an ammonia call based on this work above

The greatest irony in the thread is that rinsing your sand in tap water would’ve stopped your mini cycle, not caused. Says the only work thread this thread w see
am aware how crazy that sounds, but the tap rinsing allows you to be thorough. The final rinse is in saltwater, to evacuate the tap. Sand safe to reuse. Partial rinsing moves over actively degrading proteins that were in various stages/breakdown before the move

The transfer of detritus is the sole cause of the cycle recycle and mincycle during a tank move. It is never lack of bacteria. You adding bacteria was ok, you were quelling a suspected detritus ammonia spike from an incomplete rinse. The best part is, that’s a short lived phenomena you’re safe after twelve hours time regardless of what any test kit says if that water is clear, not smelly, and fish aren’t thigmotaxic all of which a single updated pic reveals. with one pic and a known time duration we can call ammonia better than any kit but seneye it will still win heh


Ammonia lethality is so clockwork predictable, and linked to detritus clouding, you can run a tank move thread forever using no ammonia testing and never kill a tank if you just make cloudless new setup tanks. Anything partial rinsed risks a recycle, anything thorough rinsed (or total new bed swap) doesn’t. Ever. The bacteria you move are always enough it’s merely the clouding you have to exclude. People think of bacteria as far too weak to be enduring what we demand they endure for pages.
B

 

[Johnson556]

Wanna see a trick where we can discern ammonia by you posting a full tank picture

Regardless of the test reading I’ll go with the pic based assessment post one if you can, taken just now

You have a twelve hour time frame you’re about to photograph, the end point of a day’s ammonia + bioload.

The rocks you moved over can process an already known amount of ammonia. That w be factored. Even if you lower dilution, the live rocks are enough.

Clarity of water in pic w be factored, position of the fish. Any down low rules it out. All fish up top means likely ammonia issues anything besides that is false positive.

If you ever want to move a tank again and never have to use bottle bac, ammonia testing, and never recycle here’s five years work in one thread. 100% of tank work turns out no cycle ever.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445

On your current tank there are adulterants that skew the testing in place now, testing isn’t that important now, post a pic w make an ammonia call based on this work above

The greatest irony in the thread is that rinsing your sand in tap water would’ve stopped your mini cycle, not caused. Says the only work thread this thread w see
am aware how crazy that sounds, but the tap rinsing allows you to be thorough. The final rinse is in saltwater, to evacuate the tap. Sand safe to reuse. Partial rinsing moves over actively degrading proteins that were in various stages/breakdown before the move

The transfer of detritus is the sole cause of the cycle recycle and mincycle during a tank move. It is never lack of bacteria. You adding bacteria was ok, you were quelling a suspected detritus ammonia spike from an incomplete rinse. The best part is, that’s a short lived phenomena you’re safe after twelve hours time regardless of what any test kit says if that water is clear, not smelly, and fish aren’t thigmotaxic all of which a single updated pic reveals. with one pic and a known time duration we can call ammonia better than any kit but seneye it will still win heh


Ammonia lethality is so clockwork predictable, and linked to detritus clouding, you can run a tank move thread forever using no ammonia testing and never kill a tank if you just make cloudless new setup tanks. Anything partial rinsed risks a recycle, anything thorough rinsed (or total new bed swap) doesn’t. Ever. The bacteria you move are always enough it’s merely the clouding you have to exclude. People think of bacteria as far too weak to be enduring what we demand they endure for pages.
B

This was the greatest response to any question I have ever had on Reef2Reef, from one Brandon to the next, Thank you. Here’s some pictures, it’s 10:30 right now so I had to mess with the lights a bit to get a good pic. Second one has a yellow lens over my phones camera.

Based on your statement above, I should be good to go. With the exception of this white tail bristletooth who is new and in love with that left side glass, my flasher wrasse and anthias all seem to be doing their thing swimming all over the tank both high and low. As for the sand rinse, I can confidently say, although I rinsed it with tank water from the old tank, it was rinsed to the point that when it was dumped into the Reefer it barely caused a disturbance in water clarity.

If the tank is in fact good to go, I have two more fish sitting in a separate system waiting to be transferred. Planned on doing it in the next few days, would it be acceptable to do so?

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

-May 30th (Thursday) I began transferring contents from my 240G system to a Redsea Reefer. I used about 60-80lbs of 3 year old live rock and the aragonite from the larger system. I would siphon out the substrate and rinse it about 5 times with tank water to make it clean as possible. Once the scape was done I loaded the tank with the CUC and ran a chemiclean cycle for the next two days. Tank looked incredible once the lights where back on.

-June 1st (Saturday) I moved the tank into its final place and did a 100% water change with Tropic-Marin Bio-Actif, let everything settle for the next day

-June 2nd (Sunday) I added a bottle of bacteria, white tail bristle-tooth tang and my trio of Lyretail Anthias. I was hoping the added bacteria and established sand/rock would allow me to do so

-Today (June 4th) early AM I test ammonia just to see with an API test kit. Results where not good... Granted I'm not sure if I waited 5 or 10 minutes, the results still showed between .25-.5 PPM of ammonia

Is this possible/likely or are these test kits garbage? I've read that they often read ammonia when there is none. When I left everything seemed fine, inverts doing there thing and fish where swimming around normally last night.

What should my next move be, 50% water change? More bacteria? Remove the fish?

I recently replaced biological filter, with new one and had same effect after few days all well. I think waiting game, now.

 

[brandon429]

Brandon the pics look great and you get points for successful pre rinsing using limited water the tank is golden clear n good. Yes I agree the system can take on some more bioloading just fine

Caught another bioindicator of no free burning ammonia: open palys or zos back left yay

It’s neat you completed a skip cycle transfer just going off your own intuit about rinsing sand. As you can see, 99% will not rinse even with tank water as they fear bacterial loss, you knew to rinse it in spite of this common notion

The true hallmark of an ammonia issue here won’t be any set and holding low levels of ammonia, claimed, it’ll be any upward change in reading in 12 hour increments. If you start getting true purple readings and a known increase then we’ve surpassed your transferred bacteria and I’ve never seen it occur not once