HELP! Ammonia

Luke Smith

Active Member
Iv been struggling with ammonia levels it’s now at 1.2 fish are ok at the moment..... il be carrying out a sump water change today
Ok the tank has been running 3 months, I went the colony route
I’m putting in BIO s to reduce the amonia but I can’t seam to get a handle on it
What can I use to help tame this down??? it’s a redsea 500
 

Joe Adair

New Member
You're not adding enough bacteria or the ammonia wouldn't be there. Do a double dose today and a full dose for 2 more days. Your bioload is obviously too high for your current bacteria colony ...if you have too many fish, that's a permanent condition and you might want to stock up.
 

Luke Smith

Active Member
Iv brought this-
sera Siporax Ceramic Rings Filter Media 25mm Pond/Aquarium Use (600g (3 litres))
And
Sera Siporax Bio Active Professional Biological Aquarium Filter Media Remove NO2, NO3, NH4 (210g - 400L of water)
But I know this will take time to start as there will be no bio yet,
I’m doin a water change soon then il do another Sunday


 

PSU4ME

JoePa lives on!!!
Staff member
PREMIUM
Are you using live rock? If so, how did you introduce it? Dead or “live”

what are you testing ammonia with?


Dilution is the solution here....... short term fix here to help the fish.
 

DaveK

Well-Known Member
More to the point -
What fish do you have in the system, and how large are they?
How much live rock do you have in the tank?
How did you cycle the tank?

After 3 months, your tank should usually be cycled.
Bio-media such as Siporax is seldom needed in a reef tank.
Adding additional bacteria to an established tank will only do something if you didn't cycle the tank correctly when you set it up.

Water changes are the quick temp fix. To actually resolve the problem, we need to figure out what is wrong and correct that.
 

Luke Smith

Active Member
I followed many peoples advice and dived in on the Colony route and added fish all seamed ok, looking back I’d done things different and feel I’m dealing with the cycle of the tank,
Tank has tmc bio rock in with 15kg of live rock
Fish
2 clowns small
Yellow tang small
Blue spot tang 3 inch
Porcupine puffer 3 inch
Malficent fox face 5 inch
5 chromis 1 1/2 inch
Orange spot goby 4 inch

2 cleaner shrimp
1 blood shrimp

8 turbo snails
2 hermit crabs
1 tuxedo urchin

next year il be going to a bigger tank a 6ft (id like a redsea tank)

food wise I was told to give 4 frozen chunks of food a day
Iv reduced that to 3-
1 Copepods
1 marine cuisine
1 my sis shrimp with garlic
2 prawns for puffer
 
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DaveK

Well-Known Member
It seems like you don't have enough rock in the system. A tank that size should have about 60 kg to 120 kg of rock, depending upon the density of the rock. This can be made up of any kind of porous rock. If your not using 100% live rock, then you are going to need time for any dry rock to populate with bacteria. This can take quite awhile, sometimes a couple of months or more.

For a 3 month old system, you also have way too many fish in the tank. Typically you want about 1 inch of fish per 5 gal of actual water in the system. By the time you add all the rock and sand, that Red Sea 500 is holding about 100 gal or so of water, possible even less. This gives you a max total length of fish of about 20 inches. You have about 30 inches of fish. That's about 1 1/2 time the usual recommended stocking limit. There is also no room fro the fish to grow. You also have two tangs and the foxface, all of which are big dirty fish, and produce a lot of waste products.

I'd recommend you reduce the number of fish by about 1/3 to 1/2, so you end up with about 15 inches or so of fish. You can return them to your LFS, sell, or give them away.

You don't mention how you cycled the tank. It's quite possible your tank is still going through this process. Only time will really resolve this.

Now if it were possible to do this all over again, I'd recommend starting with only 1 or 2 fish, and after adding those, wait several weeks before adding another fish, and wait again. As matters stand, yoou are going to need to do fairly large partial water changes to keep the ammonia down. This will also slow down the cycle of the tank.
 

Luke Smith

Active Member
Thank you Dave a lot what you said is very good information.. iv done a partial water change yesterday and ammonia is at 0 now I will check again tomorrow to monitor it.

Cycle wise I went down the colony route advised from my LFS that said they did the same route as I was going to do so do that and be fine, if this is true for fish il probably start looking for a bigger tank as I don’t want to rehome them ( all the fish are swimming around and there is no aggression or upset in the tank and no stress.... I will monitor my ammonia as I don’t want no upset.....
Also one lesson learned clean yet bottles out before use with RO as I think foolishly there was resadue from previous test.... lesson learned
 
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