Bad tap water-ammonia .25- thoughts

[Angela1108]

So we have a tank. It is older and established. Other than a slight nitrate (40-60ish) problem everything was good until today. I checked the tank parameters today (tomorrow is water change day) and I noticed the ammonia is at .5pm We had a snail die overnight which is what prompted me to check because I know sometimes a death can trigger a spike.


For now I added prime to make the ammonia not lethal. Now the reason I did this- I double checked our tap water and it is coming out at .25pm so I know it isn't going to help very much.

So my question- should we switch to using a mix of bottled and tap when we do the changes? We've never had an issues with ammonia and our tap only recently has ammonia. I also know bottles won't always have all the minerals and good stuff that are beneficial.

I double checked - no plant debris or anything else that would have jumped the ammonia other than the water change a few days ago and that one snail.


It's a 55g planted. Nitrite was 0 ph was 7.8 and the nitrate was 40-60ish again. (The chart I have they look super similar so hard to tell) and as I mentioned above ammonia was .5


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[BBradbury]

Your Tank's Chemistry

Hello Ang...

There is nitrogen removing filter media available. Acurel has a very good product. I've used their cut to fit poly fiber for years. The company has been in the aquarium supply business for decades.

There are a number of floating plants that will keep nitrogen down. I like Hornwort. Common water weed (Anacharis) and Pennywort are also good. You just drop individual stems into the tank. No planting is needed.

Large, frequent water changes fix just about everything. I change at least half the water in my 55 and 60 gallon tanks every week to two weeks. The chemistry stays very stable. A constant water chemistry is more important than the chemicals that make up your tap water.

B

 

[Angela1108]

Ok. Yeah we are pretty good about water changes. The only time we have missed was when we were on vacation so we went like a week and a half instead of a week. We usually do close to 50%

I was just wondering if the change in the tap would be bad. We've never had issues with ammonia in either of our tanks so I was surprised to see it at .5 since a snail is so tiny compared to 55g.

We do have hornwort and anacharis. Maybe I will grab some more a little later today if I go out tonight


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[Angela1108]

And since our tap apparently isn't 0 for ammonia I will look into the filter media to remove it


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[dalto]

That is actually very normal. You water probably has chloramines in it. As long as you are dechlorinator that is capable of handling chloramines you should be fine . Prime will work fine for this purpose.

You should not need to use special filter media for this. The prime should help detoxify it and the nitrogen cycle/bb should remove it pretty quickly if your tank is cycled.

 

[Fresh2o]

I had 1.0 ppm ammonia and 5-10 ppm nitrate straight out of the tap for most of 2012. I limited my WC % to about 25-35% and it usually measured zero ammonia in the tank. Only when I did a big WC (75%) did I notice some ammonia and nitrite the next day. In 2013 the water params went back to zero and I was able to increase the WC % with no consequences.

 

[Coyne]

That is actually very normal. You water probably has chloramines in it. As long as you are dechlorinator that is capable of handling chloramines you should be fine . Prime will work fine for this purpose.

You should not need to use special filter media for this. The prime should help detoxify it and the nitrogen cycle/bb should remove it pretty quickly if your tank is cycled.

+1 to this
An established BB colony will be able to convert .25ppm of detoxified ammonia with no trouble. Get plants if you like plants, but otherwise you should be fine.

 

[Angela1108]

Yeah it is definitely an established tank- years old. And we have lots of plants so it is just weird to all of a sudden have ammonia. But I know it does happen randomly sometimes in established tanks. That snail was the first death in that tank in a super long time.

I am thinking we might still get some more hornwort or anacharis though


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