[elTwitcho]

I had 4 ac300 sponges sitting in a bucket of tank water with pure ammonia added for about 4 days at about 70 degrees F. I am currently battling high ammonia levels in my 55 gallon for the last 2 weeks. I am currently diluting the water daily with 30 percent water changes, adding ammo lock, and salt. Still have 8 ppm ammonia. The highest nitrite reading was at .50 ppm but the last 3 days has been zero. Also there is a positive reading on the nitrates. Seems like the bacteria that converts the ammonia to nitrite died off. Besides a possible ph crash what else could have caused the bacteria to die off even though there was an ammonia source in the bucket the sponges were in ? I am baffled on why this happened.

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Jerry, without a shadow of a doubt the reason you're seeing this is because of the lack of circulation. For the bacteria to get at the ammonia (it's food source) the water has to pass through the sponge, and without a current you're going to see very little of that happening. because of the porousness of the sponge obviously all the bacteria isn't going to be located on the surface, in fact I'd bet the majority of it is located on the inside since the outer layer only represents a small portion of the surface area available for bacteria to culture on. I'd think this, more than a lack of oxygen in the water is your cause for the bacteria die off.