Ammonia & Ammolock

[Adrienne]

For an unknown reason my tank has had an ammonia spike. I did add a new fish (copper band) the week before this happened to my tank (Red Sea Max C-250) and the week before the copper band a piece of live rock. I first noticed this 5 days ago (Friday) when testing after my weekly 12% w/c. As the LFS had suggested having some ammolock on hand I added this. I noticed about an hour later that my bubble coral and frogspawn had closed up a bit.
Saturday I was away all day - no chance to test or do anything but I did not that the frogspawn and bubble coral were still not fully opened.
Sunday - Tested pm. My test kit showed .6 ammonia. W/C 20 - 25% and added a half dose of ammolock. Frogspawn and bubble coral not opened, others appeared ok.
Monday (yesterday). Tested am 1.25 ammonia W/C 20-25% - this time none of my corals fully opened apart from the carpet xenia and one of my trumpet corals. Tested pm 2.5% ammonia so another 20-25% w/c.

I phoned the reef shop in the South Island. He said to stop the ammolock as he felt the test kit was picking up the converted ammonia rather than the actual ammonia level in the tank and to observe the fish behaviour. He felt the corals, while not happy, may have been reacting to the ammolock.

W/C again this morning 20-25% and test still as high as yesterday.

Too early to tell if the corals are going to open up as the lights don't come on for another two hours.

Note: My fish are showing no reaction at all - I have cleaner shrimp, picasso clowns, pyjama cardinal and copper band butterfly.

Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Also, should I have removed my carbon before using the ammolock?

 

[DaveK]

You seem to have a real mess on your hands. You most likely have one or more of the following -
Something is dead. Very likely with new LR.
The system does not contain enough live rock.
The system is overstocked.
The system was never cycled correctly.

You are going to need to get the ammonia issue fixed. Using ammolock is not the way to do it. You must resolve the underlying issue.

Make sure your test kit is good. You might want to have your LFS test the water to verify your test kit.

Check for anything dead. Give your live rock the smell test. Good rock will smell like the ocean. Rock with dead stuff on it will smell really bad. If the rock is bad, remove it to another container and cure it there.

How much live rock do you have in the system? You should have about 65 pounds or so. You may need a lot more, but it usually needs to be cured first in another container. Only rock that has been in another reef system, for an extended period of time, can be brought home right away and put in the display tank with out curing.

I recommend you discontinue the use of products such as ammolock. I feel it does a lot more harm than good, especially to corals. Make water changes to lower the ammonia value. Yes, you may be doing a lot of them.

Once a tank is correctly setup and cycled, you should almost never have an ammonia problem, unless you have a total system crash.

 

[Adrienne]

Yes it doesn't make sense.

I have about 30kg of rock - so around 65lbs. Nothing smells bad - in fact the whole tank doesn't smell apart from a mild salt odour. The rock I added was from the live rock tank at my LFS and had coraline algae on it - had been there for around 5 months.

The tank has been running for about four months, prior to that the majority of the rock was cured for over four months while I was waiting for the tank to land in NZ.

I have two test kits - both show high readings however the suggestion is that the high readings are ammonium which the ammolock has converted the ammonia to. I have stopped adding ammolock as this was when the corals started to look sad.

Stockwise
5 astrea snails
1 skunk cleaner shrimp
1 pajama cardinal
1 copperband butterfly
2 picasso clowns
+ a crab of unknown origin

Are 2 x 50 litre water changes a day enough?

 

[DaveK]

This is going to require tracking down the problem. Test your new water to make sure that's not the source of your problem. I'd also give every coral the smell test. Check out that new piece of LR for any dead things on it, especially sponges. I'm thinking something has died and that is the source of the ammonia spike. Another possible thing to consider is how much and what your feeding. You may want to cut that way down while the problem is being worked on.

 

[Adrienne]

Tested the water which is RO - ammonia is 0. Nothing smells. I moved all the rock that I could yesterday to check nothing was under it. I've cut down the feeding - just target feeding now and not too much. The ammonia test this morning shows it is dropping and I've done yet another water change. Will test and change again this afternoon.

My lights don't come on for another 2 1/2 hrs so I will be interested to see what opens up, or if anything does.

 

[DaveK]

The tank may be coming back into line. Keep an eye on it.

 

[Adrienne]

Yes it does seem to be. Still doing 2 x 50 litre changes a day. Will tread very carefully over the next six or so weeks even if it does seem to all be good.