Sick Fish - Can't solve the problem

[Jaws]

Ok so the ammonia tests definitely came back positive. How ammonia spike I don't know. The only thing I can think of is maybe from a bacteria die off after treating the tank but I had way more rock in there the first time I treated it and everything did fine. Doing a 30% water change right now then we'll see how things respond.

[Jaws]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

Are you just using 30 pounds to filter 300g of water?

Since taking the big tank offline, yes. They tell you to remove the rock if you can when you treat with CP because it absorbs some of the treatment.

[reefwars]

if you just tested after adding prime then i dont think that test would be accurate....is it? long time since i had prime going

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by Jaws

I had way more rock in there the first time I treated it and everything did fine.

Well ya, that's the point. You need a certain amount of rock to treat ammonia in that volume, less rock, less filtration. 30 pounds in 300g isn't enough to process waste from all the fish, therefore you get NH3 build up. You have too small a filter.

[Jaws]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

You have too small a filter.

Hmmm. What do you suggest I do to boost the filtration? I don't have any cycled live rock anymore. I would've figured that this would be similar to a fish only tank without live rock now but I guess even they have sump filters to boost bacteria.

[Aquattro]

Ya, you need something. No rock, you use other media. Hit J up for some foam blocks, he has some that he was cycling for me.

[Jaws]

Sure you don't need em?

[Aquattro]

Nope, I'm good. My rock has caught up to the load and I'm not running the foam anymore.

[Jaws]

Ok thanks. On a positive note, most of the fish have bounced back after the water change. The powder blue, purple tang and moorish still aren't eating but they're swimming around better at least. Hopefully they bounce back too.

[Myka]

I'm confused, is the 300-gallon the display? It's the display that has 30 lbs of rock? If you don't have enough rock you will need ceramic rings or bioballs or something like that. Foam is a bad idea because it gets clogged and can end up being anaerobic (bad). Do you intend the tank to be fish only or a full reef? If you want a full reef you will need rock rather than bioballs/ceramic rings, but if it's fish only then bioballs are very good at their job and inexpensive.

How big is the treatment tank? CP can definitely affect biological bacteria if you use a significant dose of CP. If you stick to usual dosing of 10-20 mg/L it shouldn't affect biological bacteria. What do you have filtering the treatment tank?

Also note, ammonia detoxifiers are NOT compatible with Salifert test kits (I think Elos is the same, but I haven't checked specifically). You will get a false positive no matter how much detoxifier you use. The SeaChem Ammonia badges work well (I've used literally dozens of them over many years) and although they work very well as "alerts" they are terrible at giving an actual measurement, so don't rely on it for the amount of detoxifier to dose. API test kits are compatible with detoxifiers, but API isn't the most reliable test kit...