Question...?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

[fishsticks]

lastnight i tested my water for ammonia it was at 0 ppm.
i did a 50% water change because it was up to .50 ppm.

and just a few minutes ago i decided to clean off my glass a little with that magnet cleaner and as i was doin that i noticed stuff fly off my liverock when i moved my cleaner by, stuff floated off the rock like i guess old fish-doodoo or old food? and i did it all around my tank "cleanin up my rocks" i think thats what i was doing the water had stuff floating all over the place and i wanted to do that so my wet and dry filter can capture all that. than i decided to test for ammonia again so i did, and my ammonia was up to 1.ppm :shock:...............

by my stiring that stuff could my ammonia climbed???? or is it because something is seriously wrong n my tank. its been up for 6 months with purple stuff growing now i have some white in my liverocks... HELP!

and befor doing water changes is it wise to stir up stuff so u can suck it out while your doing a waterchange.???? like i did when i was "cleaning off the liverock" ????

 

[fishsticks]

i dont know what to do what can be spiking my ammonia..... 30 gallon oceanic bio-cube tank, wet dry filter in the back removed bio balls and put crushed liverock in the back and i have 33 pounds of liverock in my lil tank, 15 pounds of livesand.

2 clowns 1nch each
1 firefish 1nch
1 randalls goby 1nch
1 royal gramma 1nch

 

[Piggy]

Before doing a water change I clean off the glass and rocks. This way some of the stuff that comes off can be taken out of the water during the change. Have you had anything recently die in the tank? Did you mess ith the sandbed? If so either could give you ammonia.

 

[yote]

I like to use the hose and siphon that crap off the rock,then I'll take an old maxi-jet and blow the rest loose and finish the water change.And I never touch the sand bed.

 

[daugherty]

i just skim the sand bed but do not touch it.

 

[Bifferwine]

Usually stirring stuff up will make nitrates climb, not ammonia. Ammonia is usually caused when you have too many fish, insufficient filtration, adding fish too quickly, or something dying.

 

[joeman]

stirring up the detritus is a good thing, letting it sit is a bad thing - so what you did was fine. In addition to the thoughts above, I'll take a couple of guesses at what is causing your problem:
> you have a lot of this detritus sitting around, which is decomposing and causing the issue you see - though I would have thought that you would be detecting nitrites as Biff says
> the rock rubble in the back is just trapping stuff and letting it decay - much as Bio-Balls would do. It's important to keep and filter medium clean and clear of crap - rock or not...
> but the stongest candidate really is somethign dying in there - keep an eye on the Ammonia and if it keeps going up, that must be it.. it might be in your rubble at the back..

yes - when you do a water change you should try to hoover up all the stuff.

You might also want to think about an additional powerhead or two for circulation to stop this stuff settling. I also have the 29g Biocube, with the return (actually coming from a sump) and two Fluval nano-streams (smallest ones). I kept adjusting the position of all three flow sources until I could see some form of water movement wherever I looked. Still don't know if I got it right - only time will tell. I found that I had a lot of detritus accumulation when I relied solely on the return flow...

 

[2008pollyanna]

I read in my directions for my biocube NOT to clean the bioballs. So, I havent even rinsed them. Is this what is correct?

 

[Bifferwine]

Not really. Check your other thread for replies.