Help? Ammonia and brackish

thedavidzoo

thedavidzoo

Members
So, did all my WC today, same procedure as always, for years.
I have one 40B brackish at 1.01sg at 69 degrees. At some point this morning I noticed the only fish in the tank breathing heavily. I thought even last night he wasn't 100% and wasn't interested in food, but he usually only eats every 2 days anyway.
Well, I tested the water in the brackish tank after the WC and it registered ammonia. My freshwater tanks are fine. I did an emergency 2nd WC on 80% or so and tested again. The new 1.01 water still had ammonia, tested the 2 gal 1.01sg bucket with brand new water that I temporarily "rescued" the fish into...and it tests for ammonia! Tested another FW tank, all is well. I used API drops test, plus API did sticks, multiple times. I don't know what is going on. I use INstant Ocean salt...
Any ideas what is happening? I know this is a reliable brand, but is there something weird with only the salt water being affected? The only other thing I can think of is I used liquid prime this am instead of the powdered Safe. But then again, i used the powder for the 2nd WC and no diff with ammonia.
 
J

Jt731

Members
Prime doesn't remove ammonia it changes it to ammonium which isn't as toxic but will still test positive for ammonia. I dunno about the brand new water though
 
thedavidzoo

thedavidzoo

Members
Fishy dead in bucket...:(

I used the same 2gal pretzel buckets I have used 100s of times for fish stuff.
Tested the brackisch tank again this morning, still some ammonia.
Mixed up a fresh batch of 1.01sg water, some ammonia.

The tank was running apparently fine for 6 weeks as brackish, with small increases in sg every week with WC. Theoretically should have been fine for the BB to adjust. Could it be that with each brackish WC I was adding an amount of ammonia from the salt that the BB never got on top of, and finally did the fish in?

This subject has come up on numerous reef forums, so at least I am not the only one. They did mention that the introduced ammonia amounts should be taken care of by the BB very quickly and not really affect the fish at all.

I'll test all my samples again later to see if anything changes...
 
thedavidzoo

thedavidzoo

Members
Nope, old but clean PFS.
Just tested the now empty brackish tank again...I think it is still registering some ammonia (hate those color cards).
Maybe my BB weren't quite as robust as I thought. I never increased the sg more than 0.002 per week as recommended though. I'll have to assume it was an unfortunate combination of factors: Excess ammonia added with salt during WC and weak BB...But why would it take 6 weeks to finally hit critical? Oh well.
 
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