Did I do my tests wrong?

I am still a noob when it comes to testing my water, but I usually test 2 times to make sure. I have the red sea test kits and did them just a few mins ago and here is my data.

Calcium- 450
pH- 8.0 (yes it is quite low and I have an additive to get it back up and I am also about to do a water change)
Alk- was normal right in the middle
Ammonia- (I am not sure how to calculate but I am pretty sure its really low) Here was what I came up with for a calculation, I got .25 on the ammonia level, the toxic ammonia level is 5.8 of 1mg per liter. I have a 160g tank but the calculation if I base it off of there example is, .25X.058/100=? (I am not even sure if I put in 100 or if I am suppose to convert 160g into L)
No3- 0
No2- 0
(I am also confused as to why both my No2 and No3 are 0 shouldn't I have some trace amounts of it?)

If these calculations are correct then that could explain why my skimmer is working like crap and not pulling out much green slime. For my sake I hope that it is in fact why my skimmer cant pull anything and not that my skimmer indeed sucks and my water is crappy.

Either way I am about to do a 20g water change.

Please tell me if my calculations sound correct or what I should change or retry.

 

Anyone have input?

 

bump

 

how old is your tank,
If you have zero nitrates and nitrites then your tank has not cycled, and you have ammonia which is highly toxic to fish. Ammonia needs to be zero.

How old is your tank, what type of salt do you use, Secondly for alk put an exact amount not a in the middle, that doesnt mean anything. and 8.0 ph is low but wont kill anything. i wouldnt worry about calcium until you get your cycle under way

also 3 clownfish in your tank is suicide for one of them.
and if you ahve those levels i would not add the achilles for a long time. I have also read they sometimes need to be only tang in a system.

 

Hello dumbderk, I am not sure on the Red Sea test kits as I have never used them myself. That sounds really complicated converting all that. I use Salifert and API myself. However, the new Red Sea test kits look pretty nice and I may switch to using them when I run out of tests.

But as for your skimmer, I believe it should pull stuff out of the water regardless of ammonia level. If it is a new skimmer, it just may need a break in period before it starts to really kick in.

You can very well have ammonia readings and no NO2 or NO3 readings. It would just mean that your bacteria that converts ammonia to nitrite is less than it should be when compared to the other types of bacteria that converts nitrite to nitrate and nitrate to nitrogen. That could happen if you start a mini cycle in your tank from disturbing sand and rocks, overfeeding, or adding too many fish at once. But, I would strive to always keep ammonia and nitrite at zero. I would also strive to keep nitrates at zero or low as possible. Nitrates at zero can be very hard if you have a FOWLR tank with fish that produce copious amounts of waste.

edit: +1 with tank possibly not cycled. I took for granted that your tank was cycled because your join date

 

Actually the tank is 2 years old, so this means that my tests were off and it looks like I will have to test a couple more times to get an acurate reading. And as for my join date that is when I found the website I think that it may be going through a minicycle because I did move around rock recently and that means that my skimmer indeed does suck, it has been breaking in for the past month and a half then.

 

sometimes i have heard new skimmers can take up to 8 weeks to break in. Marine land especially.

if you moved the rock around that could explain the slight increase in ammonia. stirred up some bad stuff in sand maybe.

 

Nope. Clownfish live in a harem. If they are introduced while small enough, they will be unsexed juveniles. As they grow older, the most dominant one will become a female and the 2nd most dominant one will become a male. The least dominant one will remain an unsexed juvenile indefinitely. If one of the sexed Clownfish dies, then the juvenile will become the male and the male will become the female.

Adding 3 (or more) Clownfish to a tank only becomes a problem when one of 2 things is true:

1) Those being added are not juveniles. Multiple males or females will fight to the death.

2) You are introducing non-juveniles to a tank that already has established Clowns in it (non-juveniles).

 

I redid my tests and came up with the following after a 20g water change.

Salinity- 1.023
Ammonia- .15
pH- 8.1
Alk-1.0 (very low)
temp in my tank is raising a tad in the high range so I need to lower the temp.
Nitrite- .05
Nitrate- 0
Calcium- 450ppm

So basically I think it is going through a mini cycle, I will continue to do water changes as necessary. And as for the pH and Alk, I am dosing for that right now.