Quote:
Originally Posted by browntrout  Since we are on this topic. I have a question. I bought a red sea master kit the other day as well. I use salifert for dkh and calcium. Is .25 way high for ammonia? What would cause that reading. I do water changes every 2 weeks (i have a 75 gallon tank) anywhere from 10-12 gallons. |
Hi,
There are many reasons ammonia can be present in an aquarium.
Is the tank in question aged somewhat? What type of filtration do you use? Do you have any live rock or live sand and how much?
How many fish do yo have and what type? How much do you feed the fish? Do you dose it with any chemicals? Have the tank gone through any medication recently?
These are all very important questions we must all ask before delving further into investigating the causes. But before we do, I "definitely suggest" you do at least a 25% water change immediately and test again, then after a day take another reading and see if ammonia levels change at all.
While 0.25ppm ammonia may not be enough to make fish gasp for better water by acting weird, it's definitely NOT a healthy thing to have in your tank by any means. It causes immune systems to weaken greatly, and it is seriously detrimental to the life and growth of any corals and most invertebrates.
Ammonia and nitrites should ALWAYS be at untraceable level or ZERO in any testing we perform in any established aquarium. Having ammonia present means there are not enough bacteria to break-down all of the waste from fish and whatever you put into as food as well as something dying and decomposing.
The nitrate level you have of 20 ppm is also a bit too high for most people to call a healthy tank. While nitrates are more tolerated by hardy fish, it's still not a healthy situation to have...and with today's availability of nitrate scrubbing media and advanced equipment, there isn't really an excuse to accumulate nitrate in our tanks. Perhaps 10 would be 'tolerable' immediately before a change...but keep doing water changes till its at least 10ppm or less and repeat often enough to keep it that way.
I hope you can get to the bottom of the cause for ammonia accumulation...
Also, while efficiency of protein skimmer varies, its not wise at this point to remove it until you can resolve the ammonia issue. I say this because the bacteria that converts ammonia to nitrite, and from nitrite to nitrate are all aerobic bacteria need that skimmer going. And they depend greatly on availability of oxygen as well as the tank's capacity to dissipate CO2 out of the tank. While the skimmer's main goal is to remove wasted by-product of animals physically out of the water, it also has a secondary effect of mixing tons of water with air, helping exchange gasses with environment surrounding the tank. The existing bacteria, which are fighting hard to keep your tank less toxic are REALLY depending on this gas exchange process to keep breathing oxygen.
So adding or replacing the skimmer with a better one will help, but don't remove or stop it until you have a new one installed and ready to fire up immediately.