ammonia spike

i noticed one of my clowns was hiding this morning and the other one was erratically swimming around the tank, his face had a white tint to it, he looked stressed, hitting rocks while swimming, they never do that.
i tested ammonia and it was at 1 for sure maybe a little higher, i tested ph and its normal.
i dosed the tank with prime and all seems well with the fish, they no longer look stressed and are looking for food, im not gonna feed them this morning.
peppermint shrimp were out , not normal.
yesterday, i did a little tank cleaning, moved a bit of sand back into place after its been moved by powerheads, scraped some green corraline off side tank walls, nothing major.
yesterday, i did notice that 1 zoo was bent over like it was deflated, never seen that before.
all the corals, what i have anyways, all look fine, completely open.
what the heck happened? do you think i stirred something bad up when i moved some sand?
my sand is only an inch deep, possibbly 2.5 in spots that built up from water flow.
im gonna test ammonia again when i get home from work and start doing some water changes throughout the week.
im gonna try and test everything before i go to work and see if anything else is out of whack
im stumped.

 

Posted By phishcrazee on 02/04/2008 8:32 AM
Hmmm, I don't think scraping a little algae off would cause a spike like that........... sounds more like something died.  Do you have anything that could have snuck nito the rockwork and died?
everything is accounted for, nothing is missing , theres quite a few snails in there but i dont see any empty shells laying around.
i dunno, its just one of those things i guess.

 

prime is a ammonia/nitrite detoxifier, removes chlorine, breaks the chloramine bond then detoxifies ammonia, works great and is a must if you ask me just for problems like this.
its a good idea to have a bottle laying around, it will get you several hours of leeway when you need it and stop the effects of ammonia..
it did work fast, they were fine within 1/2 hour, but still something is wrong.
fish seem really good right now, begging for food as always.
on saturday i did add some baking soda/ water to raise kh but before and after testing wasnt drastic, it went up 1 point and is still too low.
im gonna start checking everything starting with my ro water then test ph/ammonia/nitrite/nitrate/ calcium/kh the whole shmo.
then do a water change.