Whats Up With My Ammonia

[mattrock]

can any1 help?


my marine tank been goin for jus over 3months now everythings seems ok on all my water tests iv retested today for the ammonia and its gorn from 0 - clear to 0.1 how can this happen?? and is it ok 2 start with the coral and fish? i know 0.1 isent alot but i thought it should b at 0

cheers mattrock

 

[dilbert]

Have you used the same test kit and has the colour chart easily to distinguish colours?

Then, it's possible that under the rocks detritus or something similar has accumulated and starts rotting, now.

When ammonia isn't rising really, fish don't care about little spikes of 0.1 ppm.

Corals don't like red slime and hair algae. When you would get an outbreak of them the corals would need get cleaned at least daily or polyps could stay shut. Not a good start.

For corals, the figures of alkalinity, calcium, magnesium, and phosphate are important, too.

Then, some corals are quite easy to keep. Candy cane (Caulastrea sp.) is a very good LPS beginner coral. Very easy to see how it is feeling and very tolerant.

Do you have a plan what corals to keep? If you simply start with the easy ones and then always keep adding then it's easy to get problems with coral warfare in the end.

 

[mattrock]

ello mate

i went 2 my local fish shop and thay give me some corals mushrooms and some snails and crabs 2 clean the tank up, then said try a few fish in a few weeks

 

[johnnyjtaylor]

What test kit are you using? I've got a nutrafin/hagen ammonia test kit that always says 0.1(its crap basically) and the results can appear different if you check your test in different light i.e in natural light or under electric light. Just a thought.

 

[mattrock]

the test kit iv got is the nutrafin one as well... all the other tests are at 0

this was 0 then 0.1 then 0 then 0.1 again the local shop said if i put somthing in like crabs etc it would push the cycle around the system

 

[johnnyjtaylor]

Salifert test kits are better and in my oppinion give more consistant results than the nutrafin ones.
Just out of interest how is your tank set up? (live rock or filter)

 

[mattrock]

tank set up so far its been running for 3half-4months i also had the 205 running with jus water on its own for a month


140L
LIVE SAND
LIVEROCK (22K)

heater
floval 205filter
aquaclear 70
t5s lights (thin bulbs)

jus put in 4snails and 5red hurmt crabs for the clean up crew

2x mushroom coral

becuse of the t5 lights iv been told i cant have hard coral... is this right??