0.25ppm Ammonia help!

[ExtremeBoss]

Hello! Today I did an Ammonia test on my 10 gallon tank and the result was light green under yellow, which is 0.25ppm. So the thing is, I want to do a water change to get it back to 0ppm, but I have a question. How much water should I take out and what does that LOOK like. Thanks.

 

[Aiken Drum]

Do a 25% water change. Retest every day and if you see any ammonia do a 25% water change. Keep this up until you are consistently 0ppm.

Could i ask a few questions? Your post doesn't give much background.

Are you a novice fish keeper?

Are you currently cycling your aquariums?

Do you have your other water parameters?

If you want to see what a 0ppm ammonia test looks like, do a test on some bottled water.

 

[fishwonder]

Your ammonia is not a problem unless your pH is around 8. What is the pH of your water?

 

[ExtremeBoss]

The pH of my water is 6.4.

 

[fishwonder]

The pH of my water is 6.4.

The common aquarium “ammonia” test measures the total ammonia, both ionized and un-ionized (Total Ammonia Nitrogen or TAN).

The chronic toxicity, where the ammonia kills slowly by a variety of mechanisms, is as follows:

• 20 to 100 ppm of ammonia TAN at a pH of 6.0
• 2 to 10 ppm of ammonia TAN at a pH of 7.0
• 0.2 to 1 ppm of ammonia TAN at a pH of 8.0

Any pH between the above numbers you will have to make a linear interpolation. As you can see there is a 10 times increase or decrease in toxicity between pH levels.

A pH of 6.5 will reduce the growth of beneficial bacteria by 90%. A pH of 6.0 will virtually stop beneficial bacteria from oxidizing ammonia to nitrate; hence ammonia may be on the rise.