Good thing Sea Monkeys are very tolerant to ammonia
Posted Jan 31, 2022, 7:49 PM UTC
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I wonder what the ammonia levels would be in the ocean zoo tank,if it's that high in a three gallon tank.
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I have a large number of sea monkeys in the tank, probably a more dense distribution than it would be in the little ocean zoo tank. Although I do think ammonia tolerance is one reason why they work in very small tanks. I don't have an ocean zoo tank to test.
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Got a saltwater master test kit just to satiate my curiosity. Tested my ~3 week old 3 gallon tank and while other parameters were within acceptable limits it blew out the ammonia test. Regular fish start having trouble with 0.2 ppm. I've got somewhere over 8 ppm, at least 40x what would kill fish. Even my year old 1 gallon tank tested at 2.0 ppm.
I've tried dosing with quick start beneficial bacteria, but I think the bacteria are on the Sea Monkey's menu. I just tried again with the bacteria, this time using a turkey baster to gently deposit it at the bottom of the tank onto my sand substrate, hopefully the bacteria can get established in the sand before being eaten.
Would love to hear what ends up working for you. I ended up losing my entire colony to what I can only assume was a huge spike of ammonia. All of my other parameters are within the healthy range, so I don't know what the hell happened!
I have a lifeless tank now, so I'm thinking of changing out as much of the water as I can to see if I can restart things with a new colony. So frustrating.
What do you feed yours, by the way? I was doing spirulina for a while but thought that was gunking things up a bit too much, so switched to nanno algae to hopefully start a more healthful growth, but I fear it may have been too little too late.
I feed mostly live nannochloropsis algae, supplemented with spirulina powder.
From what I've read brine shrimp can handle up to 1000 ppm ammonia, so it would have to be a hell of an ammonia spike to kill them.
Yeah to be honest I have no idea why they’re failing to thrive. I have a tank light above them that I turn on for a few hours a day, and I’m wondering if that could be too much. I’ll have to try again I suppose!