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Huge ammonia spike with cloudy water- HELP!!!

13K views 21 replies 5 participants last post by  Rosco43 
#1 ·
Hi-
I am new to this site and reefkeeping in general. I started my tank about 6 months ago. 72 bowfront with 30 gallon refugium. About 2 weeks ago I tested my water and everything was great Ammonia-0 Nitrites 0 Nitrate 0.
A few days ago I noticed a trace of ammonia. I bought ammo lock and tried that. Now a couple days later my ammonia is between 2 and 4 ppm! I did a 15 gallon water change yesterday and this morning nothing has changed. I plan on doing a 20 gallon water change today. I suspect this sudden spike is due to overfeeding. (I got a little cocky when my nitrates got to 0!) Yesterday morning I woke up and the water was cloudy for the first time, and it is still cloudy today. I have 1 percula clown, 3 chromis, 1 firefish, 1 small yellow tang, 1 yellow watchman, and a scooter dragonette. In addition to that I have a cleaner shrimp, blood shrimp, banded coral shrimp, 3 small pistol shrimp and dozens of hermits and snails. I also have several soft corals and a couple of lps. What should I do????
 
#2 ·
it is likely that you are seeing the effects of your overfeeding. keep doing water changes, its really the only way to fix it

as for the cloudiness, it could be a free floating algae bloom that is feeding off your high nutrient levels. whatever it is, it should go away with time and water changes! keep an eye on your water parameters and change about than 15 or 20% of your water as often as you wish. i wouldn't change more than about 50 or 60% at a time though.

the ammo lock doesn't remove the ammonia, it just converts it to a non toxic form, which your test kit will still pick up.

also, i'd say you're pretty much maxed out in the way of bioload

keep water changing!
 
#3 ·
hey and welcome to trt!

ok, first thing is first. id really strongly urge you to get all living things out of the tank asap. i know it is very inconvenient, but it is the right thing to do. do you have a friend with a tank or maybe your lfs will hold them for you? any detectible ammonia, even in the less than 1ppm range is extremely toxic to your fish and inverts and may cause permanent damage.

unfortunately, water changes will really not do the trick when it comes to ammonia. you will have to find the source. couplea things to look for. any dead critters for one. next, have you sprayed any sort of chemicals near the tank? any painting, bug sprays, antibacterial stuff? something like that can decimate the bacterial populations if it gets into a tank.

id suggest you are kinda on the heavily stocked side, as well, for a 72 gallon tank. the tank is also probably too small for the yellow tang, as well.

now, a couple questions. what kind of water are you using? tap, ro only, ro/di? what kind/how much rock? what kind/how much sand and how deep? what kind of lighting? what is the water flow situation in the tank? what kind/how many powerheads? what is the filtration situation? how muc/how often/what are you feeding? is there any algae growing on the rocks or glass? what is your maintenence routine?

hopefully with the answers to these questions we can get ya sorted out and on the right track again!
 
#5 ·
If you can't get everything out, then oxygen depletion is what you want to avoid. Get some (as much as you can) surface agitation going. If its a bacterial bloom they will use up oxygen quick. And while changing out the water look hard for a source of the ammonia. I can't see over feeding causing a spike like that. On the other hand how old are your test kits, 6 months or more I'm guessing. Don't rely on one kit alone, pick up another ammonia kit and re test. Not sure how adding ammo lock would affect things if your ammonia was actually zero, but I'd still want to double check that test result.
 
#6 ·
thanks for all the responses!

I am using ro/di water. I have around 70-80 lbs of live rock and a 2.5" sand bed in the main tank and a 3.5" bed in the refugium. I have 2 powerheads--which brings me to another possibility--

I ordered 2 powerheads about 2 weeks ago, and while I was waiting for them to arrive my only powerhead died on me, so there were about 4 days that I had no additional circulation. Could this have something to do with it? Also, my tank was usually kept at 78 degrees, but lately its been between 79-80. I have cut down on feedings. I am going to do a 20 gallon water change today.

Also, a couple of days ago my sea cucumber was laying on my long tentacle anemone. Could this have killed it? maybe that is what the spike is from?
 
#7 ·
is the cucumber or anemoe dead? how big were/are they? i would say that the temp has nothing to do with it. my temp swings from 78-80 most days.

are you using a skimmer?

why do you have the sand in your refugium? is there anything else in the refugium?

what are all your tests showing atm? ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH, sg, temp. what is your tds from the ro/di unit?

as a side note, 6 months is a very young tank to have an anemone. how long has he been in there? anemones are sensetive creatures and require very stable water conditions and are usually best left to older tanks of at least a year or so.
 
#8 ·
I think you may be on to something regarding your power heads and circulation. I'm leaning a bit towards a mini cycle. The temp thing shouldn't be an issue, but if there was very little circulation it may have killed off some bb and has gone through a mini cycle. This can also happen when people re aquascape and change how all the flow was hitting the rocks, causing previously well oxygenated areas with little oxygen and killing off bb. Got any Prime?
 
#9 · (Edited)
What is prime? And yes, I have been doing a bit or re-aquascaping lately. I had a rock with button polyps that had zoo pox or something like that. I dipped the rock in coral rx a couple of times and a ton of baby brittle stars came out. Maybe some of the remaining ones died? As for the anemone, I got that with the tank. I bought a fowlr tank from someone and transported all the water. That was in January. Since then I have added more rock and some coral, and all the fish/crustaceans/cleanup crew. The anemone actually divided a few weeks ago, so now I have 2. The cucumber is about 4 inches long.

Right now, I have the powerheads aimed at the surface to agitate the water. I ust did an 18 gallon water change. Should I add more ammo lock? Quick start?
 
#11 ·
prime is an ammonia binder, I think.

imo, id begin removing the stuff from the refugium. the rock, sand, and macro algae. they are not needed and making your system dirty. how long was the tank running before you got it? sand beds fill up, and when they do they begin releasing stuff back into the water column. as for the rock in the sump, it only makes it much harder to clean. there is plenty of rock in the display to take care of the biological filtration. as for the macro algae, its not needed either. it isn't really removing anything from the tank, merely binding it. if there are no nutrients left for the macro to eat, it will begin dying, releasing nutrients back into the water. imo, the better option is to keep the tank siphoned and not allow the nutrients to get into the water column in the first place.
 
#12 ·
IMHO Macro's are something for the display tank, and I only use the ones the fish eat. :) If those are your last numbers (Ammonia 0 Nitrite 0 Nitrate 5 ph 8.4 salinity 1.025 79degrees) you are making head way or did you get new test? I am leaning towards a bacterial bloom brought on by the powerhead going out. I keep Prime for emergencies, it is made by Seachem also helps with ammonia, but have used AmQuel (Kordon?) in freshwater. I am not overly impressed with API products, I used those with the fresh water.
 
#13 ·
I am looking at a bottle of Prime by Seachem right now. It is a tap water conditioner (what I use it for) but it says it may be added to the tank directly to remove ammonia, chlorine and chloramine. It says it also detoxifies nitrite and nitrate. I assume it fixes or binds these
 
#15 ·
is there any way at all you can get the living things out of there? a friends tank or something? 2ppm ammonia is way high and everything in there is feeling the effects right now if that test is accurate. if they are exposed to that for long, there may be some permanent damage.

don't mean to harp on the subject, but those animals are relly not happy right now
 
#18 ·
After doing more research, I've found that using ammo lock will give false "off the charts" readings. all the livestock seem to be doing fine and acting normal, with the exception of the corals. They seem to be all closed up. I'm hoping it's because the water is a little cloudy.
 
#19 ·
The ammo lock doesn't remove ammonia. It just changes it to a less harmful form, so the test kits will still pick it up even though it's in a nontoxic form. And corals are generally more sensitive than fish so they might still be feeling the effects of the spike.
 
#21 ·
I think the underlying issue was that I got a little cocky about my perfect levels and started overfeeding. I got a nice reality check. I did a few water changes and it is mostly clear. I put some carbon in the sump. I believe this whole event was due to a combination of:

1. Not having a working powerhead for 4-5 days.
2. Serious overfeeding.
3. Not testing ammonia regularly--I became focused on getting my nitrates to zero, and I wrongly assumed that if my nitrates were 0 then my ammonia would be also.
4. Procrastination. I was always ahead of the game when it came to water changes, somewhere along the way I got complacent and let the last one go too long.

This experience has served as a major reality check! I can only hope that I don't have any losses from this....time will tell.

All the non-corals seem to be doing fine. However, my xenia looked pretty bad and when they were disturbed there was a lot of cloudy white "smoke" coming up from them, so I removed them from the tank and put them in quarantine. The other corals look much better today then they did yesterday.
 
#22 ·
Just a follow up- My ammonia is now at zero. I think that the high 2 ppm reading was inaccurate due to the ammo lock. I did a total of 3 water changes and added carbon, which I never used before. Everything in the main tank seems to be doing fine, from fish to corals.

Could the bacteria bloom have been from having my refugium light on too long? I had it on a timer so that it would get 8 hours of light while the main tank lights were off. The timer had malfunctioned, leaving it on when it should have been off.
 
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