I've just checked my amonia levels and it's sitting at 0.2ppm, The nirtrite and nitrate levels are 0.  The tank is 2 and a half weeks old and i have 2 clowns, a small piece of gsp, 3 zoa frags annd a torch coral which is dying. I added a few balls of bacteria to my tank in the bio ball compartment at the back of my tank a few days ago. Should i add more now to combat the amonia and turn it into nitrite? Can you add too much bacteria? I've attached a picture of my torch thats dying aswell.

Think your clowns, GSP and zoa will be hardy enough, but agree that the tank is too young for LPS. I wouldn’t be surprised if your torch doesn’t make it. The ammonia is a little high but you may be okay. Adding more bacteria will not harm, but it will take time to really establish them. Make sure you don’t overfeed. Get some CUC as well when you can. If worried, do a 10-20% water change now, see tomorrow and repeat if necessary. Also good to make sure you have enough aeration e.g. via skimmer or powerless breaking surface of water.


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Cheers guys the whole torch fell apart and was emitting a  brown kind of sludge. I think they're was an underlining issue with the torch itself and as it started to fall apart and rot then my ammonia levels went up. Makes sense. My zoas and gsp are happy and open up fully in the day time. Going to hold off on feeding for a day or two to see how it goes.

Torches (euphyllia) are sensitive to BJD (brown jelly disease). This is bacterial, if the coral is unhappy these bacteria are no longer suitably suppressed and can pop up again. Once it starts, the coral will be gone in a day, maybe 2. Happened to a hammer frag that got stung by my bubble anemone

You can use a pipette to squirt jelly of ideally if you can take the coral out of tank. Make sure jelly doesn’t touch other corals as can spread easily! But chances are even if you remove jelly the coral may already be a goner.

How’s it looking today? Ammonia going down?


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Are you getting any algea growth? What size is the tank?

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I'm not confident with my test results at all. I'm using red sea marine care test kit and never have I once seen my nitrites or nitrates at anything else other than 0 and it's confusing the hell outta me. I'm not 100% sure on the tank size but there is some algae growth and the tanks water is pretty murky today so im guessing it's going through an algae bloom.  As soon as I get time in thee next few days I'm going to take a sample to my lfs and see what's going on.

@Eady  Bingo. I took my water to be tested at my lfs. their readings were consistent with that of mine at home.

I added more bacteria yesterday and Im happy to say my amonia has gone back down to 0ppm. I think when the torch died and parts of it started to rot in the tank it sent my ammonia levels up... I took the the torch out and it's left me a nice little skeleton which im going to keep as a souvenir :) Amonia, Nitrite, Nitrate all at 0ppm... Going to wait a week and add CUC. What do you think i should get? Bearing in mind my tank is still young

When I first set up my tank last year, I had 12 blue legged hermit crabs (with some bigger empty shells so they don’t evict the snails), 12 turbo snails and 3 x cleaner shrimp. They have proved pretty effective, I have since added 2 x sandsifting starfish and 2 x urchins .


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