Please, help me deal with my tap water ammonia levels

[amb25]

Hi, I'd appreciate any help I can get here

I prepared some tap water yesterday for a water change on my 6g, planted, freshwater tank, 1 male betta. Now, I always test my water before my water change. I had ~0ppm ammonia, 0ppm nitrite, 0ppm nitrate.

For some reason, I decided to test my prepared tap water (+Seachem prime). API shows 2-4ppm ammonia, pH 7.2. I thought something was wrong with my test kit since those are pretty high ammonia levels in my drinking water, so I tested with bottled water. Bottled water showed 0ppm ammonia so the results were correct.

I had to go ahead with the water change since I had removed the water already from my tank, but I put my fish in a separate quarantine tank with bottled water. Today, I test my water in the morning (pH 7.2, ammonia 1.0-2.0 ppm, nitrite 0, nitrate 5ppm. This is very strange to me since I'm used to seeing 0 even after a week of bioload.

I'm very worried about my fish. At this point, I feel like I'll have to do daily water changes. What could have happened? I called 2 different local fish shops. One told me I had to double dose Prime. Another shop told me that as long as I was dosing with prime, my fish would be fine. I already lost a fish to ammonia poisoning once (although it was my fault as a beginner), so I'm terrified I'll hurt my fish and plants. Please, someone guide me on what to do. Will boiling the water help??

 

[vance1013]

I recommend dosing to the full tank volume or even double dose it'll help. Also how long was the prepared water sitting for? I would do another water change at 50-75% first off. Second, do an ammonia test straight from the tap, and I would gas off a glass of water for 24hrs then test. Floating plants will help absorb a lot of that, also possible any of the stock may have died. Might want to contact your local water company and see if any chemicals were changed.

 

[Aiken Drum]

Your tapwater is probably treated with chloramine rather than the more common chlorine treatment. Chloramine is ammonia and chlorine chemically bonded and is a much more effective water treatment than chlorine and is becoming more common. Unfortunately for fish keepers chloramine is an ammonia source.

If its not something you have seen before, maybe your water company just made the switch from chlorine to chloramine, or maybe they did some work on the infrastructure and added a bigger dose of treatment and its resulted in a higher concentration. Contact your water company and ask whats going on. Maybe the chloramine has always been there and your testing the tap water has just brought it to your attention.

But, many, many people have chloramine treated tapwater and keep fish just fine in it. Going forward more people will have chloramine treated water as more water companies switch to the more effective treatment.

Most water conditioners break the chemical bond in the chloramine, releasing chlorine and ammonia. The water conditioner will treat the chlorine side leaving the ammonia, which a cycled tank should remove quite quickly. Using Prime as a water conditioner will also detoxify the ammonia for a day or two while your cycle removes it. If you are seeing a high level of ammonia in your tap water a double or triple dose of Prime may be needed.

 

[m.j.gomez]

Hi, I'd appreciate any help I can get here

I prepared some tap water yesterday for a water change on my 6g, planted, freshwater tank, 1 male betta. Now, I always test my water before my water change. I had ~0ppm ammonia, 0ppm nitrite, 0ppm nitrate.

For some reason, I decided to test my prepared tap water (+Seachem prime). API shows 2-4ppm ammonia, pH 7.2. I thought something was wrong with my test kit since those are pretty high ammonia levels in my drinking water, so I tested with bottled water. Bottled water showed 0ppm ammonia so the results were correct.

I had to go ahead with the water change since I had removed the water already from my tank, but I put my fish in a separate quarantine tank with bottled water. Today, I test my water in the morning (pH 7.2, ammonia 1.0-2.0 ppm, nitrite 0, nitrate 5ppm. This is very strange to me since I'm used to seeing 0 even after a week of bioload.

I'm very worried about my fish. At this point, I feel like I'll have to do daily water changes. What could have happened? I called 2 different local fish shops. One told me I had to double dose Prime. Another shop told me that as long as I was dosing with prime, my fish would be fine. I already lost a fish to ammonia poisoning once (although it was my fault as a beginner), so I'm terrified I'll hurt my fish and plants. Please, someone guide me on what to do. Will boiling the water help??

Hello, I believe everyone is correct about using prime for the protection of your fish. If you'll be patient I think your beneficial bacteria will increase & process the ammonia you are having(like adding too many fish). This may take a couple of wks till back to 0ppm. Hopefully this helps you!!!!!

 

[amb25]

thanks! Tap water is 7.0ppm. With conditioner, it stays 2-4pm. My fish looks healthy but I still don't feel safe putting that amount of ammonia into my tank. I've a stable pH at 7.0-7.2 so I think the ammonia won't be toxic then. I've been trying to reach out to my water company all morning but nothing. I asked around my city calling different pet shops and they said I was testing the water wrong or something else was happening since their tap water is not as high in ammonia I did another water change yesterday and will test ammonia tonight.

I haven't done more water changes because that will just introduce even more ammonia into my tank

 

[amb25]

Thanks!!! I'll be calling my water company. The water quality report for 2020 says 3.58ppm chlorine but no mention of chloramine. Maybe they're introducing it now. My current worry is that yes, my tank is converting all the ammonia but since it's so much ammonia, my nitrate levels go up to 5.0pm within the first 24 hrs.... Just last week, my nitrate was hitting 0pm after 7 days still. This situation is stressful...

 

[Aiken Drum]

An additional 5ppm nitrate per week wont make any difference. 40ppm nitrate is perfectly acceptable. If you have plants you should have it above 20ppm or your plants will suffer nutrient deficiency.

 

[m.j.gomez]

thanks! Tap water is 7.0ppm. With conditioner, it stays 2-4pm. My fish looks healthy but I still don't feel safe putting that amount of ammonia into my tank. I've a stable pH at 7.0-7.2 so I think the ammonia won't be toxic then. I've been trying to reach out to my water company all morning but nothing. I asked around my city calling different pet shops and they said I was testing the water wrong or something else was happening since their tap water is not as high in ammonia I did another water change yesterday and will test ammonia tonight.

I haven't done more water changes because that will just introduce even more ammonia into my tank

I know you said you have a planted tank but have you considered using terrestrial plants on top of the tank? I personally like to use golden pothos vine. They use ammonia, nitrite, nitrates for food & are fast growing. You can hang on side of tank & if arranged correctly look very nice.
I've herd of people using sweet potato, spider plant & peace lilly. If the plants do cause a problem w/aquarium plants simply pull & pot. Warning if you decide to use pothos it doesn't bother fish but don't let other animals chew on plant it will irritate their mouth.

 

[amb25]

An additional 5ppm nitrate per week wont make any difference. 40ppm nitrate is perfectly acceptable. If you have plants you should have it above 20ppm or your plants will suffer nutrient deficiency.

WHAT? I didn't even know that... Internet ppl would tell me I HAD to change it when it reached 5.0ppm.... That's some very good info to know. THANKS

 

[amb25]

I know you said you have a planted tank but have you considered using terrestrial plants on top of the tank? I personally like to use golden pothos vine. They use ammonia, nitrite, nitrates for food & are fast growing. You can hang on side of tank & if arranged correctly look very nice.
I've herd of people using sweet potato, spider plant & peace lilly. If the plants do cause a problem w/aquarium plants simply pull & pot. Warning if you decide to use pothos it doesn't bother fish but don't let other animals chew on plant it will irritate their mouth.View attachment 323260View attachment 323261

I do have a pothos (and another plant I don't know the name of) Thank you for the suggestions!! Pothos looks really pretty hanging off the edge of a tank

 

[Aiken Drum]

WHAT? I didn't even know that... Internet ppl would tell me I HAD to change it when it reached 5.0ppm.... That's some very good info to know. THANKS

Ive got over 5ppm nitrate from the tap. Legal limit here in UK is 50ppm, i get about 7ppm. Its lower in USA, 10ppm there i think, but i also know people from this site that have much poorer tapwater quality over there than the legal limit and can't drink their tapwater.

Every 1ppm converts to 3.6ppm nitrate, assuming nothing else is acting on the system (like plant growth). A fully stocked tank is probably putting the equivalent of 1ppm ammonia into the water every day. So thats about 25ppm nitrate per week. So 50% weekly water change schedule would get a fully stocked tank upto around 50ppm nitrate before the water change brings it down to 25ppm. A week later back to 50ppm. If you were to be keeping nitrate at no higher than 5ppm, everyone fully stocked would need to be doing water changes every 2 days.

Very lightly stocked tanks (eg a betta in a 6g tank) will see much lower levels of ammonia and nitrate production. You can either still do your weekly water change and keep your nitrate at very low levels, or maybe change water every 2 weeks. Both are fine. If you are keeping plants, they need some nitrogen. If they arent getting this from fish waste they might suffer unless your fertiliser contains some nitrogen.

5ppm nitrate might be a good target for marine systems, where the tanks are lightly stocked, the livestock is less tolerant of higher nitrate, and their set ups are designed to undergo a further stage of the nitrogen cycle where nitrification happens and nitrate is converted to nitrogen gas. This is difficult to achieve in freshwater set ups.

Edit: Can you link me a source that says nitrate needs to br kept below 5ppm?

 

[m.j.gomez]

Thanks!!! I'll be calling my water company. The water quality report for 2020 says 3.58ppm chlorine but no mention of chloramine. Maybe they're introducing it now. My current worry is that yes, my tank is converting all the ammonia but since it's so much ammonia, my nitrate levels go up to 5.0pm within the first 24 hrs.... Just last week, my nitrate was hitting 0pm after 7 days still. This situation is stressful...

There are 2 ways I know of for testing if its chlorine or chloramine.
1= is to get a gallon of water & add an airstone to it for 24hrs(maybe 48 since high) If ammonia tests lower or 0ppm it's chlorine.
2= boil some water in clean pot for 15-20min. Let cool & test. If 0ppm then chlorine. If either test same amount of ammonia as before than chloramine.

 

[amb25]

Ive got over 5ppm nitrate from the tap. Legal limit here in UK is 50ppm, i get about 7ppm. Its lower in USA, 10ppm there i think, but i also know people from this site that have much poorer tapwater quality over there than the legal limit and can't drink their tapwater.

Every 1ppm converts to 3.6ppm nitrate, assuming nothing else is acting on the system (like plant growth). A fully stocked tank is probably putting the equivalent of 1ppm ammonia into the water every day. So thats about 25ppm nitrate per week. So 50% weekly water change schedule would get a fully stocked tank upto around 50ppm nitrate before the water change brings it down to 25ppm. A week later back to 50ppm. If you were to be keeping nitrate at no higher than 5ppm, everyone fully stocked would need to be doing water changes every 2 days.

Very lightly stocked tanks (eg a betta in a 6g tank) will see much lower levels of ammonia and nitrate production. You can either still do your weekly water change and keep your nitrate at very low levels, or maybe change water every 2 weeks. Both are fine. If you are keeping plants, they need some nitrogen. If they arent getting this from fish waste they might suffer unless your fertiliser contains some nitrogen.

5ppm nitrate might be a good target for marine systems, where the tanks are lightly stocked, the livestock is less tolerant of higher nitrate, and their set ups are designed to undergo a further stage of the nitrogen cycle where nitrification happens and nitrate is converted to nitrogen gas. This is difficult to achieve in freshwater set ups.

Edit: Can you link me a source that says nitrate needs to br kept below 5ppm?

Thanks for going further with the info. I can't really link all the reddit posts from r/bettafish and r/quarium where they always tell you "the goal is for everything to be 0ppm" (everything as in ammonia, nitrite, nitrate). But then when I was also learning about aquariums and googling stuff, it came up. If I googled, "how much nitrate should be in a fish tank" The answer that came up tells me ideally you want less than 25ppm. Then, when I googled "how much nitrate in betta tank" the answer is 10-20ppm. So then I thought the less nitrate the better

 

[amb25]

There are 2 ways I know of for testing if its chlorine or chloramine.
1= is to get a gallon of water & add an airstone to it for 24hrs(maybe 48 since high) If ammonia tests lower or 0ppm it's chlorine.
2= boil some water in clean pot for 15-20min. Let cool & test. If 0ppm then chlorine. If either test same amount of ammonia as before than chloramine.

My water company finally returned my call. They said they're using chloramine in the water but it's not on the report (srs ppl??). One final question if you don't mind, would boiling the water help reduce the initial amount of ammonia? I read online that boiling only gets rid of "free ammonia" and then I also read that "free ammonia" is the worst type for aquariums. So would boiling help?
THANKYOU for the help and time

 

[Aiken Drum]

Thanks for going further with the info. I can't really link all the reddit posts from r/bettafish and r/quarium where they always tell you "the goal is for everything to be 0ppm" (everything as in ammonia, nitrite, nitrate). But then when I was also learning about aquariums and googling stuff, it came up. If I googled, "how much nitrate should be in a fish tank" The answer that came up tells me ideally you want less than 25ppm. Then, when I googled "how much nitrate in betta tank" the answer is 10-20ppm. So then I thought the less nitrate the better

Well, i suppose lower is better, and it depends on how much work you want to put into keeping it low. Fish are fine in quite high levels of nitrate, bettas more so than a lot of other fish. I know many people keep fish in nitrate 100+.

 

[Aiken Drum]

My water company finally returned my call. They said they're using chloramine in the water but it's not on the report (srs ppl??). One final question if you don't mind, would boiling the water help reduce the initial amount of ammonia? I read online that boiling only gets rid of "free ammonia" and then I also read that "free ammonia" is the worst type for aquariums. So would boiling help?
THANKYOU for the help and time

Ive been reading some different opinions on this, but boiling point of ammonia solution is lower than water so ammonia will boil off from the water before the water boils away.

But the water chemistry is more complex than that. You dont have ammonia in your water, you have chloramine which wont boil off, thats essentially why the water company goes with chloramine as its more stable in the water and wont offgas the same as chlorine. I suppose you could treat your water with prime to release the ammonia and boil that. But that would only boil off the free ammonia and leave the ammonium. Thats good right? Its the free ammonia thats harmful? Well yes. But, in the absense of free ammonia some of that ammonium left behind will become free ammonia to take its place, which again you can boil off, but some ammonium will again become free ammonia, etc etc. Eventually you will just boil off all your water.

Seems a lot of effort with no real gain.

You really are overcomplicating everything. Your cycle will develop and deal with that ammonia, same as everyone else who has chloramine in their tap water. Prime will detoxify the ammonia for the short period until its cycled out. Thats essentially why they developed prime, so it will treat chloramine.

If you decide you dont want to be using chloramine treated tap water, you only have a 6g tank and are only doing small water changes. Use the bottled water you mention in your OP. Or buy RO water and remineralise it. Or buy a RO filter and make your own RO water. Thats got to be easier than trying to boil out the ammonia.