How to keep amonia down?

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

Mikenhecker1

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
113
Location
Hecker
Ok, I did exactly what I wasn't supposed to do. I put ten pounds of uncured live rock in my 25 gal tank and crossed my fingers. It's been in for a couple hours and amonia is already coming up. Is there anything I can do besides chemical correction?
 
Well, in the last week, I have changed out 50g to get my nitrates down. My parameters before i added the live rock were :nitrates 10 - ph 8.0 - amonia 0 - temp 78.5

My test kit might be off a little too. I'm going to retest and see. I got all the dead stuff I could out of the rock and rinsed everything before I put it in. The coralline is still good and purple, red, and orange. It's really pretty rock.



image-3939830722.jpg



image-1573092977.jpg



image-1074226199.jpg



image-945120703.jpg
 
Thanks Grizz i appreciate the advise. I'm doing water changes with 5gallon kentwood jugs. So it's kinda a pain in the butt. Lol. But I will do it if I got to. How long do you think it will take for the ammonia to go down on its own VS water changes.
 
Cycling is not totally out of the question. Only have a clown a serpent sea star and a couple zoas. I might just let it go and see what happens. If things get any worse I'll do water changes. But I checked the paras again and it's looking better. Ammonia was at .50 and now it's .25. So I feel a little better
 
Just keep on eye on things no need to stress you stock sounds like you had a mini cycle You should be ok in a few weeks
 
Ok, I did exactly what I wasn't supposed to do. I put ten pounds of uncured live rock in my 25 gal tank and crossed my fingers. It's been in for a couple hours and amonia is already coming up. Is there anything I can do besides chemical correction?
That's your problem, ten pounds of uncured rock. Bacteria has to build up to convert your ammonia to nitrite, than to nitrate. That's the cycle. Your ammonia won't go down till the cycle is complete. Try some bio spira or something like that to speed it up
 
Well I picked out my liverock one by one and pulled all the dead things I could find out. I found things dead in there that looked crazy. I found like 40 small clams that were dead and sponges and something that looked like part of the rock but it was squishy. It smelt like death and when I was pulling it off orange slime came out. But my ammonia has fallen a lot scence I did this. It's down to .10 and everything seems to be perking up. Nothing dead so far, it's been 4 days. Hope it keeps doing good, critters: serpent sea star, lawn mower bleeny, maroon clown, feather duster worm, and like five new corals that made the trip, and a mussel that made the trip.
 
I'm at .10 ppm and it says 1 capful removes .6 mg per liter how much should I add. Not sure about conversion. The tank is 25 gal, with 50< lb live rock and no sand



image-1233396032.jpg
 
Prime is fine to overdose up-to 4 times the recommend amount, won't hurt corals or fish, it will prolong your cycle, that's why I didn't mention it
 
I'm at .10 ppm and it says 1 capful removes .6 mg per liter how much should I add. Not sure about conversion. The tank is 25 gal, with 50< lb live rock and no sand
Safely you can ad 10-12.5ml. It work for 24-36hrs, I would go with the bio spira, in the end you'll have a ton of BB instead of prob half that amount by taking ammonia out.
 
Lol so bio spira, ok I will give it a shot after I use some prime. Maybe I can keep them alive. :)
 
The ammonia has dropped off to .05 and my nitrates are coming up from 10 to 30 so that means the BB are doing there jobs? There are little tube worms on the new rocks that are starting to come out. The red coral still looks bad but the orange one is looking better. I'm still getting the bio spira today, I think. I live way out in the sticks so trips to town are far and few between. I think I got 5 or 6 different species of macro algae, it's a shame a large portion of the plants died off on the way here. Thanks Grizz, Mr_X, and Dalmatia I was in a bind.
 
Sure will. Making water tonight. There are more things popin up on my live rock and I bought a big bottle of bio spira and added half to the water. Turned off my skimmer too. Hope it all goes good. Thanks for the help, I will keep an eye on it :)
 
Back
Top Bottom