Ammonia in my Tap

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Japola44

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Nov 21, 2005
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Denver, CO
I finally got around to testing my tap water today. Last nigh i filled up a glass cup with tap from my sink. This morning the results were interesting. My pH was 7.8 and ammonia was at .25ppms, this would explain why pwc don't help my ammonia levels much. Everything else came out at 0.

Is there any thing i can use to neutralize it?
 
Could be that it's actually chloramines giving an ammonia reading, not sure though. If it is chloramine, dechlor should take out the chlorine and the ammonia-using bacteria should take care of the ammonia.
 
RoK said:
Could be that it's actually chloramines giving an ammonia reading, not sure though. If it is chloramine, dechlor should take out the chlorine and the ammonia-using bacteria should take care of the ammonia.

It happens sometimes....but be sure the dechlor you use is effective against chloramines....something like Prime or Safe.
 
It is almost certainly chloramines. You can check with your municipal water supply report. I am assuming that you are using a 2 bottle liquid reagent test for ammonia. If so, the first bottle adds chlorine, so that any ammonia is converted to chloramine. The second bottle adds an indicator that reacts with chloramine to change colors. Thus, for tap water with chloramine in it, the two bottle "salicylate" ammonia test will turn color. While it would be possible to have ammonia in your tap water, it is more likely to be chlorlamine. Dechlorinators break the ammonia-chlorine bond. The water conditioners differ in what happens to the freed ammonia , but most claim they "bind it" into a non-toxic state. The ammonia ultimately must be dispatched by your bio-filter, so chloramines place an ammonia load on your system. After your cycle is done, this will not have any meaningful effect.

http://home.comcast.net/~tomstank/tomstank_files/page0018.htm
 
I'm having this issue right now as well and while it is certainly interesting that the reagent converts the ammonia to chloramine (and makes me understand why chloramine affects the test results), I'm not sure how using a dechlor is going to help. It seems to me that while the chloramine would skew the test in one direction that the dechlor would skew it in the other (since the declor would remove the chloramine as it formed with the first reagent.)
 
Well, you would not have any real need to test your tap water after you added the dechlor. Adding dechlor to your tap water before you test it will not provide you with any helpful results. However, you must add dechlor before putting chloramine tap water in your tank, since chloramine is very toxic to fish.

But what of the tank? The manufacturers of the dechlorinating agents make claims about how their product would or would not effect various tests. On the link above, I tried to include those claims. It is an interesting point - if there is a pure dechlorinator such as thiosulfate(ie: not an ammonia binder like amquel or ammolock,) in the tank water, will it prevent the ammonia test from generating monochloramine which will turn the reagent color? I don't think it will prevent the test from changing color, since I assume the test kit reagents are present in a relatively overwhelming amount in that test tube, to ensure that all the possible tested for compound reacts.

As for the water treatments that also claim to detoxify ammonia (the ammonia bindeers like amquel and ammolock), one manufacturer claims that its product does not interfere with the salicylate test (ie: ammonia still shows up) but that its competetors product does. I have not confirmed these claims with independent tests.
 
Ok so basically what you are saying is, i don't need to worry about it, just make sure i use something like prime, wich i do use.
 
yep. And no sense doing any water changes to dilute ammonia unless it gets more than two or three times your tap water chloramine level. After the bio-filter is established, the ammonia load your tap water has in it will be dealt with very quickly when you do a PWC after adding dechlorinator.
 
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