where's my ammonia?

[msamsonz28]

it's been 8 days since i put two raw shrimp in my 55g tank. the shrimp dissapeared after about 4 days. i've tested the ammo a few times and every test has been 0. lr was introduced at the same time and there are things growing on it now. what's the deal? shouldn't the ammo have at least gone up a little by now? i'm using Saltwater Master by Aquarium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Any help??

 

[dianeww]

Maybe your test kit is bad. You could try putting a few drops of plain old ammonia in a vial of water and test that. If it doesn't register the ammonia, you need a new kit.

 

[mjvincent]

I would suspect your kit is bad. If your shrimp is gone you have ammonia and it could be dropping by now.

 

[malkore]

Where did you get your live rock from? How many pounds?

It is in fact possible to have enough cured live rock from startup, that you won't get detectable ammonia levels. I used a SeaChem ammonia test, using the super sensitive version, which takes 30 mins to get an accurate result. I never had more than 0.01ppm of ammonia in my aquarium.

Take a water sample to your LFS for an ammonia test (which is what I did to confirm my new Seachem kit wasn't bad), or do like Diane suggests and put a couple drops of ammonia in your test vial. It'll probably make it too high to get a proper reading, but you should see a very drastic color change, which'll confirm if the kits still working.

 

[msamsonz28]

I got my lr from the lfs...actually didn't even check to see if it was cured or not. but the staff said it would start the cycle so i assumed it was not cured. anyway i put 45 lbs in - looking back should have just went ahead and got 10 more lbs to make it an even 1 to 1. but anyway, i am going to check my test kit with some ammonia to verify it works and take a sample to the lfs as well. thanks for the help, i'll post my results tonight or tomorrow.

 

[msamsonz28]

tested straight ammo with the kit and it didn't even register anything. didn't have time to take a sample in. tomorrow going to do that and return the test kit

 

[skennelly]

When I started up my 90 gallon back in December I put in 135# of cured LR and 65 pounds of sand mixed with 20# of LS. I actually added a few fish right off the bat and monitored the tank religiously and I never got any type of ammonia spike. My tank has been doing absolutely awesome. If you get good rock and sand you can avoid a cycle as long as you don't go too crazy with adding specimans right away.

 

[msamsonz28]

well i took my water to the lfs for a test and ammonia was zero. in fact they said everything checked good, that i could probably add fish.