Ammonia ppm Readings are Confusing

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LudicrouSpeed

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Mar 12, 2014
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43
Location
Northern Virginia
I have a Seachem Ammonia Alert sensor in my tank that reads around .02 ppm. It has a range of .02 ppm to .5 ppm and describes this range as Safe to Toxic.

I just did my first API Master Kit test and found that my Ammonia is actually 2 ppm. It occured to me that these could be saying the same thing and the discrepancy is vernacular, like what we call a calorie is really a kilocalorie. I doubt that though.

If my Ammonia is really 2 ppm then my sensor is pretty worthless and I obviously need to get the Ammonia level down. In other news my Nitrites are 0, which is good, but my Nirates are over 100, which might be bad I gather?

My pH is 6 or less, and for the livebearers I have in the tank it should be more like 7.5. The Seachem pH sensor matches my liquid test result. I know that sensors are really just meant to give you a way to see quick changes, but is the takeway here that sensors are actually pretty worthless / misleading?

I'm doing a water change now, but is there anything else I should infer from my test results?

pH: 6 or less
Ammonia: 2ppm
Nitrites: 0 ppm
Nitrates: over 100pm

Thanks.
 
i found that if im not meticulous with my cleaning process of the test tubes and things.. (especially the test tube caps) they can significantly sway that test particularly...
 
I have a Seachem Ammonia Alert sensor in my tank that reads around .02 ppm. It has a range of .02 ppm to .5 ppm and describes this range as Safe to Toxic.

I just did my first API Master Kit test and found that my Ammonia is actually 2 ppm. It occured to me that these could be saying the same thing and the discrepancy is vernacular, like what we call a calorie is really a kilocalorie. I doubt that though.

If my Ammonia is really 2 ppm then my sensor is pretty worthless and I obviously need to get the Ammonia level down. In other news my Nitrites are 0, which is good, but my Nirates are over 100, which might be bad I gather?

My pH is 6 or less, and for the livebearers I have in the tank it should be more like 7.5. The Seachem pH sensor matches my liquid test result. I know that sensors are really just meant to give you a way to see quick changes, but is the takeway here that sensors are actually pretty worthless / misleading?

I'm doing a water change now, but is there anything else I should infer from my test results?

pH: 6 or less
Ammonia: 2ppm
Nitrites: 0 ppm
Nitrates: over 100pm

Thanks.


There are 2 forms of ammonia nitrogen. These are free ammonia and ammonium. Free ammonia is toxic to your fish and ammonium isn't. The percentage of ammonium and free ammonia is completely dependent on the ph and temperature of your tank water. As the ph and temperature go up, ammonium shifts to free ammonia.

Free ammonia begins to harm your fish in prolonged exposure to 0.025ppm and begins to burn their gills at 0.05ppm.

The API master test kit cannot distinguish between free ammonia and ammonium and measures the sum of the two which is known as the TAN (total ammonia nitrogen)

The Seachem ammonia alert measures Toxic free ammonia and is certainly not worthless. This is why the scale is much lower on the Seachem.

You can use this chart to calculate your the percentage of harmful free ammonia in your water. Use your 2ppm as a starting point and use your ph and temp as a guide.

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f12/your-guide-to-ammonia-toxicity-159994.html

Now the bacteria that is responsible for the nitrogen cycle cannot work at a ph lower than 6. So you need to raise it. First measure the ph of your source water that has been left out on the side for 24hrs to see what the base Line ph is.

If you haven't changed your water since the cycle started then it's possible that your ph has dropped because the chemical process that happens when the bacteria convert ammonia nitrite produce acid and uses alkalinity.

Alkalinity or kh (carbonate hardness) is like a sponge that absorbs acidity. If your source water has a low Kh then the acidity in your water will rise causing the ph to fall.

To increase kh and ph you can add baking soda as a temporary fix or crushed coral in the filter as a more permanent fix but you will need to buy the API liquid test for kh.

Hope this makes sense.
 
Yeah.... the first 2 I didn't even rinse out, and the kit is brand new, so there may have been some residual residue from the glass coating (or whatever, I don't make glass).

How should I clean them?
 
Caliban, thank you! This is totally what I needed. Can I use Chemicals like "pH Up" to increase the pH? I read that can be bad and spike the levels too fast.
 
I did more research and am doing the baking soda trick and will be testing some tap water left out overnight tomorrow of baseline pH. Thanks for the link with the tables!
 
No the reason we don't recommend those chemicals on here is because they cause fluctuations in ph.

Ph is a logarithmic scale. This means that a ph of 7 is 10 times more acidic than 8 and 100 times more acidic than 9. Can you see how large fluctuations in ph can be bad for your fish?

Ph stability is much more important and crushed coral will help to do this.
 
You're welcome. You should get the gh and kh test kit too. Live bearers prefer hard water which is the calcium and magnesium content of your water. Hardness test is gh. It will be good to know. You can research your livebearers preferred levels for gh and see if you are within range.
 
I forgot to add. Be careful adding too much baking soda too soon. You need to raise ph slowly. Also I would do 2 50% water changes first.

Right now your ph of 6 is keeping free ammonia very low. If you start to raise ph with a TAN of 2ppm it will shift ammonium to free ammonia and could start to harm your fish if ph goes to high. Remember the chart?

Also the bacteria will convert all ammonia TAN to nitrite. If you raise ph above 6.5ppm the bacteria will start to work again and you may get a nitrite spike.

Nitrates of 100ppm are way too high also you need to do enough water changes to bring nitrates to below 20ppm.

Test your tap water for nitrates too.

If you cannot keep nitrates lower than 20 before your 50% weekly water change then you are either over stocked or have too many fish with high bioloads.

Cleaning the filter media on tank water, vacuuming the gravel and using live plants will help keep nitrates lower.
 
Yeah. The baking soda raised the pH to (guesstimate form Seachem sensor) to around 7.5, alot higher and faster than I expected, and as predicted is raising the amount of free ammonia to alert levels. At least nitrification is working again, right?

I left some tap water out overnight to test, and I'm going to do more water changes now to help stabilize things. I did clean my filter after my testing yesterday, along with a 25% water change, and I do have some live plants in there; I think Elodea and an Amazon Sword.

Is there a problem with over vacuuming? I just did it last weekend.
 
Update: I did more testing and found than my TAN dropped alot, to .25ppm, and that puts me well in the green on the chart, even if though pH is too high (~8). Nirtites 0, Nitrates are lower too (~50, but I'm having a hard time gauging the color against to test sheet).

My tap water tested at pH 7.5, TAN .5ppm, Nitrites 0, Nirates 0. So I don't feel like I have an uphill battle with my source.
 
Update: I did more testing and found than my TAN dropped alot, to .25ppm, and that puts me well in the green on the chart, even if though pH is too high (~8). Nirtites 0, Nitrates are lower too (~50, but I'm having a hard time gauging the color against to test sheet).

My tap water tested at pH 7.5, TAN .5ppm, Nitrites 0, Nirates 0. So I don't feel like I have an uphill battle with my source.


That's good but nitrates are still too high and your low ammonia could be due to the water changes so still test tomorrow. Just vacuum half the gravel one week then the other half the week after. If you're worried about removing bacteria.
 
The Sensors have been pretty accurate. After following Caliban's advise I was able to really get things under control. Here are my results a week later, with no additional water changes:

pH: 7.8
Ammonia ~.1ppm (TAN), Free Ammonia is effectively 0.
Nitrites: 0
Nitrates: 40 ppm

So, my ammonia is under control, the pH is above 6 so nitrification is happening, nitrates could definitely be lower, but I'm moving in the right direction.
 
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