High tap water ammonia help!!

[MikeNHouston]

Did a water change last night just like always about 50% treated with Seachem Safe (treated for 50 gals one scoop) and my fish started dieing most affected luckily were they ruby reds and a pleco... My oscars were hurting but put them in another tank that was just finished cycling luckily they survived. I teated tank water to find a high ammonia level wondering where it came from I teated tap water ammonia was above 1ppm with API master test kit I tested my tap water because test before water change showed no ammonia. I have no clue what to do smaller water changes more often? Change my chemicals? Anything yall can help me with would be greatly appreciated please help me find a way to fix this.

 

[Aiken Drum]

Your water is treated with chloramine rather than chlorine. Chloramine is chemically bonded ammonia and chlorine, and is much less volatile so doesnt offgas in the water supply the same as chlorine. Its for this reason that water companies are increasingly using chloramine.

Unfortunately for aquarium keepers as mentioned chloramine is part ammonia, so every water change adds ammonia. If you are seeing 1ppm ammonia in your tap water thats very high. Normal ammounts would be 0.25 to 0.5ppm. This suggests your water company is doing some work on the water supply and flushed the system with a higher concentration of chloramine than normal.

In normal circumstances, chloramine treated water isnt that much of a problem. Your cycle will remove the ammonia from a typical dose of chloramine in short order.

A few precautions you can take.

- Contact your water company and ask them whether they use chlorine or chloramine. Ask them if they can warn you in advance of any work in your neighbourhood that might entail a higher than normal dose of water treatment chemicals.
- Test your tapwater prior to water changes so you get an advance warning of higher than normal chemical treatment.
- Ensure your water conditioner treats chloramine as well as chlorine. Most do, but some dont. Seachem Safe does.
- Use water conditioner that also detoxifies ammonia. Again Seachem Safe does this but you may need to overdose by 2x to protect fish from 1ppm ammonia.
- Smaller, more frequent water changes.

If the seachem safe worked as it claims it should have protected your fish from ammonia toxicity for a day or 2. Its interesting that it didnt as there is much conjecture in the aquarium hobby as to whether their products like Prime and Safe actually do what they claim.

Out of interest, whats the pH of your aquarium water? Ammonia toxicity increases with higher pH.

 

[MikeNHouston]

Ph in my tank is always about 8.3 tap water is the same it has been this way for a year the oscars have adapted well and are happy and healthy well until last night. I have decided long ago that once they get used to it it's much easier to let them live in that happy and healthy than to chase Ph.

 

[Aiken Drum]

Im not suggesting you alter the pH but you need to be more careful with ammonia as ammonia toxicity increases with pH. At a pH in excess of 8, ammonia at 1ppm will kill fish in short order, compared to a pH of say 7, where fish will be fine with ammonia levels in excess of 4ppm.

 

[MikeNHouston]

I didn't know ammonia was more toxic as the Ph rises. Thanks for that information. I have heard activated carbon helps to reduce ammonia so I've thought about adding a filter to my tap to reduce it as well .

 

[Aiken Drum]

Activated carbon removes organic compounds. Ammonia isnt an organic compound, so it wont remove ammonia.

What i think is happening is that your water has always had a level of ammonia, but that level has been below a safe threshold for your pH. Chloramine is normally dosed at around 2 to 4ppm. At a high dose of 4ppm that would be about 0.5ppm of ammonia. At your pH 0.5ppm of ammonia isnt really harmful. The amount of Safe you are dosing is probably doing a job of detoxifying that amount, and your cycle will remove that ammonia quite quickly. For whatever reason there is now a higher amount of chloramine, higher than normal ammonia, your normal dose of Safe isnt enough to detoxify it, and your cycle will take longer to remove it, so it lingers in your aquarium longer.

Whether this higher level of chloramine/ ammonia is temporary or permanent remains to be seen.

Here is a link to a thread discussing ammonia toxicity.

Your Guide to Ammonia Toxicity

*WARNING* This guide is intended to give a better understanding of Ammonia toxicity and is not intended to diagnose or treat any problems. Please use this information wisely. *WARNING* Ammonia. It's bad. I think even the most novice fishkeeper understands this concept. It's a common idea that...

www.aquariumadvice.com

 

[Aiken Drum]

And just to add, there are chemicals like zeolite that will remove ammonia. However if you use these chemicals in your filtration they will starve the microbes responsible for the nitrogen cycle and kill your cycle.

This happened to a collegue recently.

If you want to use these chemicals to remove the ammonia you need to do that outside of your aquarium filtration. Set up another container and filtration with the zeolite. Fill the container with tap water, treat with a water conditioner that breaks the chemical bond in the chloramine, then run the water through the filtration that will remove the ammonia. Then use that ammonia free water for your water changes.

 

[MikeNHouston]

Thanks very much for your help I'll set up Zeolite in my HOB filter to kill the ammonia and hopefully keep the bacteria in my main filter healthy

 

[Aiken Drum]

If the HOB is filtering water in your aquarium then dont do that. Zeolite should be entirely separate from your aquarium. While what you are proposing will have a reduced effect on your cycle because you have a filter that doesnt have it included, it will still reduce the abilty of your aquarium to cycle out waste.

Chemical media gets used up and needs to be replaced. If it gets used up before you get round to replacing it, it suddenly stops working. Due to the zeolite chemically removing ammonia your cycle isnt capable of processing the additional waste it now has to because the zeolite is now no longer working, so your ammonia rises. We have established that at your high pH ammonia is more toxic. Result, dead fish.

Zeolite also wont work all that quick. If your water change puts 1ppm of ammonia into your aquarium, it might take hours to reduce it. So you still have 1ppm in the aquarium. Result, dead fish.

If you are planning on chemically removing ammonia, it needs to be removed before you use the water for your water change.

 

[Andy Sager]

Aiken pretty much nailed it here but most important is that you contact your water company to confirm that this amount of ammonia is not usual and probably part of a system flushing. We had a situation when water companies first started switching from chlorine to chloramine. Lots of people and pet stores suffered massive fish losses due to the chlorine remover not working and there was no such product yet to remove chloramines. The end result was the water company was sued for not warning the stores about the change in chemicals and also were required to send the stores written notice of when they were doing system flushes far enough in advance so that we could notify our customers to not do water changes on those dates. It's THAT serious. if it's possible, it's always a good idea to have some extra water on hand to use either when there are system flushes or emergency water changes.
Normally smaller water changes more often is the safest bet but with Oscars, since they are so dirty, small percentage water changes may not really achieve the goal so having that water in a separate container will really help. There is a pad that will work faster than zeolite for ammonia removal ( Polyfilter by Polybiomarine: POLY-BIO-MARINE, Inc. ) You would place this pad in your filters as the last thing the water goes through before returning to the tank so that the nitrifying microbes get fed first and the polyfilter gets what they missed. Another option is to use something like a culligan filter that removes chloramines onto your main water line ( or single section of the water line that you use for filling the tank) so you don't need to worry.