Ammonia spike after disturbing substrate

[sbarbee54]

Has any one ever them selfs have a death after this? I know most of us do not touch our substrate, but I just messed with my TB tank and my SSS-SSS+ tank that has a bunch of babies that are TB,Mishchlings. And nothing, no deaths not much sign of stress. They all are doing great. I do not see any of my berried females dropping eggs nothing

[ravensgate]

Well how much did you 'mess with it'? That's kinda vague. I've 'messed with substrate' just moving stuff around inadvertantly...I've done partial rescapes...the amount of debris is vastly different. So you need to better define what 'messed with your substrate' means and how much you did. Did you do a whole rescape or just moved a cholla log? Not being a smart alec but understand, your post was quite vague.

[Assassynation]

I lost my RCS colony a few months ago to an ammonia spike. A few days after I introduced them. It has a ADA 3 layer substrate system.

[GeToChKn]

Whats the pH? At a pH of less than 7, ammonia starts getting converted to ammonium, and the lower the pH, the more and faster it gets converted, so at a pH of 5, ammonia isn't really that toxic. Seachem total ammonia test kit can tell the difference between ammonia and ammonium.

[sbarbee54]

Well i took my planting tweezers dug them through every inch of the substrate looking for some crushed coral i had in it rescaped everything so much i could not see in the tank it was so clouded

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[arktixan]

I've really noticed it depends how much it's actually disturbed, there's times where I did something major, wiped out a few, theres times where minimal movement, and no damage.

If you were careful that could easily done it.

[sbarbee54]

yeah PH 5.5 in one tank and 6.0 in another. I messed it up so bad, one of the tanks was moved too. So it was washed around like bath water.

[mordalphus]

This happens to me whenever I remove moss from one of my tanks, all babies die and some adults. Doesn't happen fast though, they die over a few weeks.