Aquarium Salt

[joy13]

Do you know or not if the ammonia neutralizer will give you a positive reading? If I remember right it will.

 

[Sonomakid]

i dont know .. sorry

 

[bs6749]

Still, if your tap has 2 ppm of ammonia and you have 4 ppm total, then your tank isn't cycled or you had something happen in your tank that is to blame for the excess ammonia. This could be overfeeding, dead fish/plants, a sudden shift to an alkaline pH, etc.

Doing a 45g PWC on a 90g tank with 4 ppm ammonia to start with will give you 2 ppm of ammonia assuming that you add ammonia free water. Since you are adding 2 ppm back into the tank you will be looking at an ammonia reading of 3 ppm. The lowest you could go with your tap water at 2 ppm would be 2 ppm. Might as well not even bother with the PWC in my opinion. I'd just add extra Prime or some other water conditioner than neutralizes ammonia. You are going to have to do this every 24 hours since that is how long the effects of Prime last roughly.

 

[Sonomakid]

so just do prime treatments every 24 hours and go from there

 

[JPKeenan]

Actually I have been having some luck with making extra water (de-chlor'd). Have the water sitting out for a day or so. It helps some of the stuff out-gas while sitting there.

I'll make an extra 8 gallons when I do a change and let them sit out... helps with evaoporation in tanks and when I do a test and say "holy moley something is wrong".

My ammonia levels were not going down in my tanks after a PWC. If I let some of the water breath breath for a while I seem to have less problems. Mine seem to be high in ammonia (not listed on my water report) and nitrates.

*lol* I still consdeir myself a newbie.... but the leaving teh water breath for a hour of so seems to work good for me.

 

[bs6749]

You are pretty much going to have to dose every 24 hours until your bacteria are able to handle the load of ammonia coming in from the fresh water in addition to the ammonia produced by uneaten food and fish waste. How long has the tank been up and running?

 

[JPKeenan]

funny thing is depending on who you ask some people swear by a bit of salt while others either say it is useless or harms the fish.

I've got some more hardy tanks (mostly danio and plateys) they don't seem to be bothered by a tablespoon per 10g. The thing that got me started thinking was I'd need a hydrometer to make sure I am not turning the water from fresh into brackish.

 

[bs6749]

Salt isn't a necessity for most species, however there are times when it can help. I use it in QT tanks for new arrivals and that's about it other than salt dips.

 

[Sonomakid]

2 weeks but everything was tranfered from a cycled tank that has been running for 2 years... only the substrate is new

 

[bs6749]

I'm guessing that you will start to see things look more normal within a week. Until then I would recommend dosing Prime every day. You could also try to get the pH around 6.0 and not worry about Prime, but I'm sure you have moderately hard to very hard water with a high KH being in MI. Might be more work than it's worth but you wouldn't need to dose every day if the pH stayed relatively acidic.

 

[Sonomakid]

yeah my ph is 8.0 right now.. so i will try my luck with the prime !!! thanks for the Help.. Go Wings!!! Go Blue !!!

 

[thominil]

I would look into a RO/DI unit. You can only add so much prime IMO. Even IF he had an established bacteria colony, the ammonia wouldn't go down to 0ppm right away thus, you have fish swimming in toxic levels of ammonia for a few hours....not a good thing IMO.....

 

[Sonomakid]

yeah you have alot of opinions..

 

[thominil]

Everyone has a different point of view and opinion.....I just don't want some idiot thinking that when I say something, I think that it is the only and right way to do something and that they have to get into abig long argument, when that was just my opinion.

 

[Sonomakid]

hey im taking everything in stride.. just trying to learn from my mistakes

 

[thominil]

That comment was not aimed towards you sonoma, it was aimed at people that just HAVE to make a comment on everything and get into an argument.

I edited previous post, I think you took it a different way than what I meant.

Sorry, these posts were off topic.

 

[Sonomakid]

no not at all.. i took it as a general comment pertaining to everyone lol

 

[thominil]

Oh, ok. I'm usually a really nice person unless someone makes me mad.....

 

[JPKeenan]

lol yeah seems like there are general consensus in a lot of things but getting into the finer details you ask 2 people something and you get 3 different answers.

 

[bs6749]

Even IF he had an established bacteria colony, the ammonia wouldn't go down to 0ppm right away thus, you have fish swimming in toxic levels of ammonia for a few hours....not a good thing IMO.....

It acts pretty fast. Most of the ammonia should be converted to harmless ammonium ion in a matter of minutes to hours like you say depending on flow rate and currents in the tank. With an acidic pH the same thing would happen nearly instantaneously. A few hours won't do the fish much harm. Not going to do them good by any means but won't make them drop dead unless levels are really high.