I just took over a tank from a friend. She gave me about 45 pounds of live rock, 2 ocellaris, 1 dottyback, 2 striped damsels, a decorator crab, and 1 cleaner shrimp. She had them all in a 40-gallon breeder with a cheap protein skimmer. I just moved it all to my 50-gallon with a 20-gallon sump, new sand, reef octopus skimmer and I added 5 turbo snails to start taking out some of the hair algae. Everything seemed to be OK the first couple of days, but now the ammonia just keep rising! I've been doing multiple water changes a day and added prime but nothing seems to be working. I've already had quite a few casualties. The cleaner shrimp, damsels, turbo snails and dottyback have all died and now the clown pair is starting to get the cloudy eyes and heavy breathing. My ammonia levels have raised to almost 1.0 ppm now. nitrite and nitrates are still close to zero. Does anybody have any idea of what I can do? My RODI can't keep up with the water changes. Should I mix some more water and keep the fish in a bucket until this passes. Thanks so much for the help.
Ammonia spike in transfer tank
By the way, she had the tank running for about 8 months before I took it over. I'm wondering if there was some die off or something that happened during the transfer. I don't know what else could be causing the spike.
Dosing an ammonia reducer (e.g. Prime, Amquel) will temporarily bind the ammonia, but it will just keep coming back until bacteria levels stabilize. So you will need to simultaneously dose a bacteria in a bottle product (look here), but if that is not enough your only option becomes relocating all livestock (LFS perhaps?) until after the tank fully cycles.
Thank you so much. I'll go pick some up today. I just thought the live rock that she gave me would have been able to handle the bioload. Any idea what caused the spike?
Sometimes moving a tank disturbs bacteria populations & causes a mini-cycle. Was everything moved submerged in water for the entire time? Any wide fluctuations in temperature? How long did the move take??
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My guess is that moving things around stirred up a lot of waste which started breaking down faster when exposed to more flow/light/surface area. Hopefully it will settle down soon but agree, Prime or Amquel ASAP. Once you add either of these products it will bind the ammonia and protect the fish. It can still be processed by bacteria and will still show up on tests. It needs to be redosed every 2 to 3 days if ammonia persists.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were some temperature fluctuations during the transfer. It was a good drive and the weather is below freezing here. All the fish seemed fine once the transfer was done, but would the change in temps cause some bacteria to die off?
Bacteria are live organisms, and susceptible to environmental changes the same as any other animal. They almost never are 100% eradicated, but their populations can take a hit if conditions are less than favorable.
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