Newbie, Amonia spike, Advice please!!

[ReefKnot]

I apologize in advance, this turned out longer than I thought, but I'm really concerned, any help would be really welcome....

I'm new to the hobby, I have a 29g with 30lbs of live rock. I am having an ammonia spike, and just wanted to explain what went down, and I would really appreciate any comments or advice. I've been to my LFS, but I'd like some second opinions.

On saturday I wanted to re build my LR design because of poor flow and I didn't like the aesthetics. I took everything out, including livestock, and began to clean the substrate. I had prepped some fresh SW, to do a water change when I refilled. The cleaning kicked up a bit of cloudiness, but not much. After building the rock set-up I wanted, I had problems getting my HOB filter to pump properly. While attempting to fix it, I knocked over a couple rocks which kicked up a huge amount of crap. I couldn't see through the tank. I fixed the filter and rock set-up, added the clean water, 30%, and gave the tank as long as I could to settle. I added the livestock, even though it was a bit cloudy. It took 24 hours to clear up. I also did another WC the next day. There was a fairly large dusting of brown fuzz, (settling detritus?) around the tank, which I have removed about 75% of with the second WC.

My fish + inverts seem fine, but today when I tested, I found a 0.25 ammonia level. I took a water sample to my LFS and they confirmed that. They told me theres nothing I can do about it but I was told to watch my fish for strange coloring, cloudy eyes, being lethargic; I have seen none of these signs, they look fine.

I was told it was not likely that my tank was cycling, but that I had kicked up the substrate too much. Can anyone please tell me their thoughts on this, and how I might fix it, or ANY advice really..... I am pretty worried about this, so I could use some reassurance from anyone with experience.... Thanks, and sorry for this being a novel...

[bertoni]

I would dose some Amquel or Prime into the tank right away, and start doing some 20% water changes.

The tank will recover on its own, and there's not much more you can do at this point.

[ReefKnot]

I was told to hold off on a wc for a week at least.... I've changed 80% total in 5 days.... And what is Amquel? I dont have access to that apparently, or my LFS would have given me some

[travis32]

Any LFS worth their money should have Amquel or Prime. Heck, the petsmart here only sells freshwater livestock, but they stock prime and amquel both.

Prime and Amquel are ammonia detoxifiers. They bond with the ammonia in the water and it atomicly changes to be less toxic to livestock than regular ammonia. Prime indicates it converts ammonia to ammonium. I don't know all the chemistry behind it, but, I had a QT cycle with 3 fish for 2 weeks. I dosed prime daily, and all 3 fish were fine afterwards.

How deep of a sand bed do you have? Do you have a sump? Do you have corals or any other invertebrates? Snails, crabs, anything of that sort?

I would definately pick up some prime or amquel. A small to medium sized bottle goes a long way!

[bertoni]

Yes, Prime and Amquel are both ammonia binders. Once bound, the ammonia is non-toxic. I can find a post on the chemistry if you're interested, but they contain molecules that attach to the ammonia and prevent it from entering the animals' cells.

Even if you don't have any Amquel, I'd still recommend doing some water changes. You could check the ammonia level in some freshly-mixed saltwater to be sure, but most will mix up to very low levels. Ammonia is a trace contaminant in most salt products.

As long as the animals look okay, I wouldn't panic, but I would get some Amquel or Prime to have on hand.

[ssavader]

A tank is "in-balance" or "cycled" when the bacterial species and quantity are sufficient enough to convert ammonia (from fish pee, first stage of waste decomposition) to nitrite, and then to nitrate, rapidly and completely enough so that ammonia and nitrite are undetectable. This is accomplished with the bacterial species Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter, respectively.

Nitrate can not be broken down any further by aerobic bacteria (bacteria that use oxygen to survive and perform chemical detoxification), so nitrate removal falls to either anaerobic bacteria (bacteria that do not use oxygen to survive or complete chemical reactions), sulfur-fixing bacteria, i.e., Thiobacillus denitrificans and Thiomicrospira denitrificans- bacteria that can use sulfur for "respiration" under anaerobic conditions reducing nitrate to nitrogen gas, H+, and sulfate), marine plants/algae that consume nitrate and produce CO2 as a waste product), and water changes.

So, you can see that any process along this chain, if impaired or broken, will result in a "back-up" of the chemical chain and result in increased ammonia and nitrite. Common events that interfere with the chemical chain include stirring up a lot of waste and over-whelming the bacterial load in your tank/filter (!), adding uncured live rock to a tank, large volume repetitive water/filter media/substrate changes, addition of antibiotics to the tank that kill useful bacteria, decreased oxygen levels in the tank from failing or inadequate pumps and/or inadequate surface agitation, etc.

Just to clarify, vacuuming your tank bottom is fine, you just don't want to be over-aggressive in turning over your substrate, like your kneading bread!

[bertoni]

I'm not sure what you meant overall, but filtration won't "back up" in that sense, if I understand what you meant. Whether the nitrate is being filtered or not, the ammonia-consuming bacteria are happy to keep working.

I agree that disturbing the sandbed (or the live rock) can interfere with filtration. That's why I don't recommend taking tanks apart without some precautions in place.

[ssavader]

Maybe it is more accurate to say that the efficiency of the aerobic bacteria is the rate-limiting step in this process. If they are over-whelmed with an ammonia or nitrite level greater than the rate at which they can process it, the levels of the ammonia and nitrite will rise.

[bertoni]

The processing rate of nitrite shouldn't limit the consumption of ammonia, as far as I can see.

[ReefKnot]

Ok lets see if I can address all of those things. So:
1. One of my closest friends owns and operates the LFS, but currently does not have any ammonia detoxifiers at the moment, I'm not sure if thats something he regularly has. But before you go off on that, I want to point out I dont live in a city, I live in a mining town in the middle of northern Ontario, Canada, so I'm lucky to have access to what I have, and my LFS only gets an order twice a month. So I make do with what I've got access too.

2. That brings up the second point, I plan on checking out the water that I have been using.

3. My substrate is not very deep..... I am realizing now that this is going to be a problem. I have crushed coral substrate, and I only have about half an inch... I did not know that I should have taken that into account.....

4. Vacuuming: It wasn't actually the vacuuming that was the problem. the vacuuming stirred up the substrate a bit, but I had technical difficulties with my pump and some rocks tumbled, long story short, the tank became a murky mess.... totally unintentional....

Anyways, I will take a trip into petsmart in the next city over as soon as I can, and as soon as it stops being -45 outside and being outside isn't suicide.... But thanks everyone

[bertoni]

A shallow substrate is fine, although crushed coral tends to become a mess over time. I ended up throwing mine away and replacing it with fine sand. The crushed coral just accumulates too much debris.

[ReefKnot]

Yeah I've been noticing, it gets gross quickly.... On the bright side I lugged my arse into town and picked up some Amquel, and just got a dose in there. I'll let you all know how it goes, but thanks for the help!

[bertoni]

You're welcome! Good luck!

[travis32]

Good luck! May want to test again. ammonia that low, may have been processed already by the biological filtration... (Depending on how disrupted it was.) If it's increasing in ammonia levels than that's a separate issue and a good thing your'e dosing amquel.

[ReefKnot]

Well I got the amquel in, and I did another ammonia test about 8 hours later.... I dont know that it help alot in that time, but the test result is much better than it was monday afternoon. Thanks for the help.

[bertoni]

You're welcome! I'm glad to hear the tank is doing well.

[ReefKnot]

Well 2 days of amquel and the Ammonia spike is decreasing. its not gone, but it has definitely gotten better. Thanks bertoni!

[bertoni]

You're welcome! I hope the ammonia is gone soon!