ammonia in sandbed ??

[dcampbell]

I have had my tank set up for about 6 weeks. I did not rinse my sand when I set it up. Mistake ! The water was like milk, for days. I have been battling a GHA problem so I made the decision to remove my Live rock and put it in the Refugium, and rinse my sand in hopes of keeping the milky silt clouding the tank at every vacuuming at bay, and two, maybe getting rid of some phosphates in the same milky stuff. when I drained the water down to sand level I noticed a strong ammonia smell when I stirred the sand. I was under the impression that a shallow sand bed (2 inches) like mine would not hold ammonia with regular vacuuming. I have read that some people believe that GHA blooms have more to do with ammonia than phosphates and nitrates. How would I keep ammonia levels down ? I test water params every 4 to 5 days now. they have been 0s across the board for over a month.

[dcampbell]

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-02/rhf/


Many organisms take up ammonia directly for use in making the proteins and other biomolecules they need to build tissues. Algae, both micro and macro, for example, readily use ammonia from the water. In cases where they are exposed to both nitrate and ammonia as nitrogen sources, many preferentially take up ammonia.6 When using nitrate, many of the pertinent biochemical pathways require the organism to reduce nitrate to ammonia before using it, so taking up ammonia makes sense.6 It has not been established in a reef aquarium setting, however, what portion of the macroalgae's nitrogen uptake is ammonia and what fraction is nitrate.

Of course this doesnt account for Bare Bottom tanks having a algae problem.