URGENT: Mini Cycle - Should I do a water change?

[excitedforfish]

Hi guys,

I just recently downsized from a 57g tank (with 20g sump) to a 29g biocube. Moved all the live rock and most of the live sand over. My 57g was only 6 months old but was battling a cyano issue.

A lot of gunk was kicked up while transfering the sand over. It has all settled now and everything looks great (corals, fish).

I moved it yesterday and tested tonight. Ph is at 7.8 (I heard it is lower at night?) and ammonia is 0.25!

I am assuming this has to do with (1) moving my tank and (2) introducing two more fish than there were before. So maybe the bioload can't handle it

Okay so my question is since I cant bring the fish back, what do I do to combat it?

Will water changes HURT or HELP/DELAY the cycle?

[naterealbig]

First, check your ammonia test expiration date. If it's past, don't count on the kit giving you an accurate reading. Do your corals and fish look distressed? A water change won't hurt anything, but even if you did a 50% water change it would only reduce your ammonia to .125ppm, which is still toxic. Also, which form(s) of ammonia does your test kit test for specifically?

[excitedforfish]

checked the kit and it isnt expired. Made sure I followed the directions to a tee, but has anyone else noticed the longer a test tube sits, the darker the results get?

I don't know what it tests for....I just have the normal API saltwater master test kit.

Also, my fish look okay. Corals look great. I have 2 clowns, 1 firefish, and 1 yellow watchman. The 2 latter hide all the time. clowns seem okay though/

[naterealbig]

OK. Yes, on some of the test kits I have had in the past, they definitely get darker the longer they sit. The trick is to read the test at exactly the time it says to on the test kit.

There are 2 species of ammonia that your test kit is reading, which gives you the result of total ammonia (NH3 & NH4+). NH3 (ammonium) is the more toxic of the two; More can be found on ammonia in this article: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-02/rhf/index.php

Bottom line? If the corals and fish look OK, I wouldn't worry about it. A water change would likely stress the animals more, and could potentially stir up more detritus, which is likely where the problem originated.

Best,

Nate

[davocean]

In most situations a WC can only help, not hinder.
I would definitely be doing larger than normal WC's if I detected any amonia, and it is a good idea to do larger WC's and more often after a swap like that, especially if you disturbed and reused the sand bed.

[excitedforfish]

Okay thank you. Will keep an eye on it.

anyone else want to give me advice :o)

[Bluemon]

im pretty sure ammonia is more toxic than ammonium

[b0bab0ey]

For now I would just keep an eye on your fish/corals and keep testing. If it is a mini-cycle then hopefully there's enough bacteria left living in your LR/sand to get the situation back under control. You also might want to go buy a bottle of Prime or Amquel to have on hand just in case things get ugly. Also, buy a Seachem Ammonia Alert Badge so you can continuously monitor your ammonia. Obviously you want to get back down to 0 ammonia but 0.25 isn't normally high enough to start killing stuff. If you hit 0.5 then start to panic.

[rsl3]

If ammonia is high, make sure that when you do a water change that you strictly remove water, not a complete vacuum of the sandbed as you will be removing more bacteria which you do not want to do.

[Curious George]

I would vacuum the top layer of the sand bed to remove detritus and step up the water changes. Adding two fish and reducing the size of the tank is likely to cause ammonia spikes. Removing some of the debris and increasing the frequency of the water changes will allow the good bacteria time to "catch up" to the increased bio-load.