Ammonia question

[Chess46]

Hey everyone,

I am working on setting up a biological filter in my 80 gallon tank. It used to be a carbon filter that is now filled with biomax. The filter is a marine land magnum 350 canister. I have some tetras in the tank at the moment. I am noticing that my ammonia reading is .25
I am doing water changes everyday to try to build the bacteria up but I'm noticing the ammonia is not changing even after the water change. I did a test on my tap water and it came out at 1.0
I have tried using prime and aqua safe. The fish are very active and eating well but I am worried about the ammonia level.
I recently read that prime could cause problems when building the biological filter. What should I do?

 

[smkooq]

Well with fish-in cycling i wouldn't be worried about .25ppm of ammonia. Once you start seeing levels rise above .5ppm is when you should start worrying.

Prime wont cause any problems when building your beneficial bacteria either.

 

[LyndaB]

I never had problems with Prime harming my cycle or anything else.

In my opinion though, once you see any trace of ammonia, you should be keeping an eye on things.

 

[Chess46]

I am keeping a very close eye on things. I test the water daily and do changes every afternoon of about 25%.

My goal is to have discus eventually. I have been hearing a lot about r/o water, what is this?

Am I doing everything I should be to get the bio filter running?

 

[smkooq]

r/o water a.k.a Reverse Osmosis, is pretty much filtered water that should be used for marine tanks not freshwater tanks.

As for your fish-in cycle you dont necessarily want to aim for 0ppm of ammonia the whole time otherwise you could end up just starving/stalling your cycle. just think of .25ppm the sweet spot

 

[smkooq]

And as far as keeping discus goes and using r/o water. You should test the hardness of your tap water and treat the water appropriately such as mixing in your tap with r/o water to make it softer if your city has very hard water.

 

[Chess46]

Should I keep doing daily water changes then? Right now my take is running 7.2 on ph, .25 on ammonia, 0 on nitrites, and round 20 on nitrates. That is after the water is treated. Should I do something to get the water softer? I have driftwood in the aquarium.

 

[smkooq]

So is this a fresh new tank?

If it is your ammonia is probably not going down from .25ppm with water changes because you have chloramines in the water. As long as your water conditioner detoxes chloramines your fine at .25ppm.

I would not change the water unless your ammonia readings rise to .5ppm or if your fish seems stressed. But seeing your ammonia rise is a good thing if your doing fish-in cycling, you just cant let it get out of control.

As far as getting your water softer, you would first have to test your tap water for the general hardness which is measured in dH (degrees), and get the levels more suitable for discus if need be.

 

[Chess46]

No, the tank has been set up for over a year now. However, the filter media and decorations are all new.

 

[librarygirl]

Did you change out all of your filter media? Your probably going through a mini-cycle then. Just keep testing the water daily and do water changes as needed. Water changes will NOT starve the bacteria and you want to keep ammonia and nitrite as low as possible, under .25 is ideal. And keep nitrates under 20. Depending on your toxin levels when you test you may need to do a larger pwc. For example, if your ammonia is .5 a 50% pwc will get it down to .25 which is borderline toxic, so either do a larger initital water change or another 50% water change. Prime will not harm the cycle, it just detoxifies the toxins in your tap water and will also help detoxify ammonia and nitrite between water changes (not to be used in place of water changes).

 

[Chess46]

Thanks so much librarygirl. Yes, I did change out all the filter media. I went from carbon to biomax. I'm testing the water everyday and doing a 25% water change.