Stubborn amonia levels, HELP!!!

[disaster]

Hi, About 1 week ago we added 20 snails that we pruchased from SWF.com. 10 turned out to be dead. Since then our amonia levels have been elevated to about 1.0 give or take .5. We have done 2, 25% water changes 2 days apart. added ammo lock. Then we did a 50% water change last night. We also added Amquel plus. The readings still remain about 1.0 this morning. What will get these amonia levels to go down. The fish seem to be doing fine but I am worried this won't last.

 

[trigger11]

Sounds like you are on the right track to me. Since the ammonia level keeps going up it sounds like you may still have some snail carcasses in there that are still decaying. Might be worth a look to make sure whatever shells you have left are occupied with a living snail.

 

[saltn00b]

you have any other clean up crew members? shrimp, crabs, hermits, brittle stars? these guys will eat anything dead before it causes a problem. snails wont eat a whole carcass. try to avoid using any additives like ammo-lock if you can.

 

[disaster]

We did add 10 hermit crabs. Although they were quite small and they are hard to locate, I'm sure that they are in there on the live rock somewhere.We also have two purple urchins. I think they only eat alge though.