So I just discovered a rather startling ammonia spike....

[cvcdrk]

I just did a 28% water change.

My water change schedule is 4 gallons every 5 days. I stick to this rigorously. Every two weeks I do an 8 gallon water change (on a day where I would normally do a 4)...just to keep things as fresh as possible. So far this has worked out well.

I tested my water last night before I went to bed. 0;0;20 were the results. Nitrates were a little high but I was due for a water change today.

Today I got home. Drained 8 gallons of water and added in 8 gallons of fresh saltwater....just like I do all the time.

About two hours later after the equipment had been running I tested the water...and to my astonishment I found the ammonia was between .25 and .50. This is a shitty API test kit (planning to upgrade to Salifert kits as these run out) but it has never failed me before.

I'm not really sure what to do. I did feed about 20 mins after the water change. As usual, my clown ate some in the water column and the scooter ate off the sandbed...and he usually leaves some mysis shrimp there when he's done. The snails find it eventually....and then I turn the equipment back on and there's usually some mysis suspended in the water column for about 10 mins before everything settles....but I am no overfeeding. He gets a small squirt of mysis and bloodworms....when I say small I mean less than 2ml when mixed into some tank water. The leftover stuff (maybe 20 tiny mysis shrimp in total) could not possibly have been enough...even if the clown wasn't swimming around catching them as they were suspended.

The only thing I have done differently is add a nitrate sponge. Kent's Nitrate Sponge is the product and I put it in a filter bag and put it into the return compartment of my overflow box for my AquaC Remora. I followed the directions and rinsed with fresh RO water before adding it.

I don't have enough water right now to do another water change tonight. I'm hoping it is just a weird time to test and I plan to test it again later tonight.

So what could this be? I haven't lost any livestock. I thought maybe my porcelin crab died but he just molted. Can his shell cause an ammonia spike because I noticed chunks of it floating around earlier and didn't remove them. I saw him hiding in a cave moving around, though o I know he didn't die. Emerald crab is good, Coral banded shrimp is good (and active), clown and scooter are both good, all the snails seem fine (although for the last few days the narcissus snails' shells have looked kind of white...is this low calcium or just from burrowing into the sandbed?). Water quality is typically good (not pristine but good...I've had trouble keeping nitrates lower than 10 on a regular basis and that is why I decided to try to nitrate sponge. Depending on how it works out I may switch to purigen. I just want to be sure whatever media I use won't affect the biological filter.

 

[Smitty]

It sounds like your test kit is giving you bogus results. Api don't have the most reliable test kits, so I'd compare the test to someone else's test kit, maybe even the lfs.

 

[cvcdrk]

I can do that tomorrow. I know they're crap but I found out after I bought the Saltwater Master kit and i figured that there was no sense just throwing them out.

It just makes no sense to me. I'm very careful about overfeeding. I hate that there's usually leftover food but it's never much (like I said...maybe 20 tiny little mysis shrimp floating around).

I'm dilligent about water changes and I add no chemicals to the tank. Not that even any of that would result in an ammonia spike. >_>

 

[FishyReef]

I'm thinking it was because you had recently fed before testing the water (though 2 hours after feeding is a little late for it to show that much ammonia. Any chance you stirred up the sand while changing the water? Out of curiosity, how much are you feeding (and do you only have the clowns in the tank)? 20 leftover mysis sounds like a lot, even though they are small. What do you have in the way of a clean-up crew?

 

[bigford]

what would happen if the fish stirred up the sand because
mine do all the time???

 

[cvcdrk]

No chance the sandbed got disturbed. the rocks got blown off really good, though.

My feeding is once a day. I have a Coralife 21" feeder. I defrost 1 cube of mysis and 1/4 cube of bloodworms with some tank water, then I use the feeder and give them a small squirt (fill it to the 3 inch line and give them about an inch). After feeding I take the roughly 90% of the solution that is left and put it back in the freezer. The next day I take that out, let it sit for an hour and then feed the same way. This much food lasts me about 1 week.

I have one scooter dragonet and one occelaris clownfish. Other live stock are 1 porcelain crab, 1 emerald crab, 1 coral banded shrimp, one big turbo snail, about 6 Narcissus snails and one margarita snail. I think I will be adding more CUP soon because the green algae is getting annoying.

Everything seems fine. Everything is acting normally.

When I feed the narcissus snails find their way over to the corner I feed in. I leave the equipment off for about 20 mins while they do their thing and clean up. They still end up with 20 or so shrimp left. They're so freaking small I don't see how that is a lot of food left. It's not like I can count them out one-by-one. :-\

 

[FishyReef]

I'd cut back on feeding to every other day. I'm also not sure how okay it is to repeatedly refreeze and thaw frozen food - I was under the impression that once it was thawed it couldn't be refrozen or would go bad. I would just cut off about 1/4 of the cube and feed every other day. Hopefully someone else will chime in about refreezing!

 

[cvcdrk]

Well I've read from places that when thawed you can keep it in the fridge up to 3-4 days without it going bad. I don't see why it would go bad by re-freezing it but if that is the issue I can just change my method I guess.

I haven't noticed this ammonia spike when feeding the same way for 3 weeks. I usually test every other day and usually about 30 mins after feeding.

 

[Kelz88]

I think of meat, you freeze it, thaw it out, and freeze it again it gets tonnes of bacteria and god knows what else.

Most frozen fish food is fish, a type of meat.

 

[cvcdrk]

Well I won't use that or do that anymore then.

I had no idea. Freezing basically places things in a state of suspended animation. Now that I think of it, though, I use a little tank water to mix it up and that is going to contain bacteria....so im freezing the bacteria in with it.

I'm going to defrost some fresh stuff tonight and start using that. I'll just buy a little tuppaware thing and put in the fridge for a couple days.

Biggest problem with frozen foods is defrosting them. You have defrost a whole cube at a time which is way too much for my little fish. >_> It's frustrating. I wish they sold fresher food at petco.

 

[Kelz88]

im lazy, i cut the cube in 4ths and just throw it in lol. Putting the unused portion back in the little plastic case. I use a utility knife to cut it.

 

[cvcdrk]

Ive heard it is very bad for the fish to no defrost it properly.

 

[FishyReef]

I feed frozen food and just take a serrated knife and cut the cube in half and then in half again, and only use one of the quarters (or I did, but now with 8 fish I don't need to cut the cube). I find the food cuts up pretty easily if you put a little pressure on the cube, then you can just put the other parts back in the freezer.

The same company that makes the marine cuisine formula now makes tiny cubes of mysis and brine. The amount in those tiny cubes are about 1/4 - 1/3 the amount in a regular cube. I use the nano mysis cubes for my 10g tank at home with 2 fish, and then occasionally cut off a tiny piece of emerald entree to feed them instead. No need to thaw a whole cube!

 

[Kelz88]

Never did thaw my food. Just seemed like overkill. If was pouring cubes and cubes of it maybe. But 1/4 isnt much when you think its over 2 tanks.