stirring up the sand

[woninil]

I had a mess this weekend with my 29 reef; its been set up 4-5 months

I noticed my bubble coral looking poorly and did a water test(no,l dont do these regularly)

It showed ammonia at 1.0 and nitrite at .50 and nitrates at 20

I began water changes and have questions about THAT Ill ask in a different thread

Im still trying to sort out the initial spike

In retrospect, I have been over feeding. I have a 55 FO i feed sparingly but I worry about those corals in the 29 so I do think I have been overdoing it

But I also have light sand that shows an accumulation of dark gunk about 1/2 inch down-very ugly so I went in and stirred the sand up just in the front to make the bad spots go away which they did

Could this have caused the ammonia??

I have two hermits but they stay on the rock so nothing disturbs the sand

 

[wannabefishguru]

im not a pro or anything but lack of cleaning and having over fed them may have contributed to the spike. I am not sure but i heard that you should stir the substrate to prevent "dead spots" from forming if nothing else does the job.

 

[mogurnda]

I don't think the stirring would have caused the ammonia spike, but it might have release enough debris to do something like that.

It would take a lot of overfeeding to overwhelm your nitrifying bacteria, and I would expect that to show up as very high nitrate as well.

It's almost as if something big died. Large snail mortality or anything like that?

 

[wannabefishguru]

i would invest in another tank cleaner, one that like to forage in or on top of your substrate.