Chloramine

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bettaman95

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Jun 19, 2022
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I noticed that my city adds chloramine to the water, and ammonia comes out at 0.3 ppm. Is a fish-in cycle still ok?
 
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Most water conditioners will also treat chloramine, but check on this with whatever water conditioner you are using.

Water conditioners that treat chloramine do this by breaking the chemical bond in the chloramine into chlorine and ammonia. The water conditioner will then treat the chlorine leaving the ammonia which under normal circumstances is processed out by the nitrogen cycle.

So you are correct that this makes fish in cycles using chloramine treated water more problematic. However you can absolutely still do a fish in cycle with chloramine treated water. 0.3ppm ammonia is essentially zero and of no risk of harm to fish. While this ammonia will be in addition to whatever your fish produce, you can still maintain safe water parameters through regular water changes. Might be a bit more work but you can do it. Also some water conditioners like prime will detoxify the ammonia for a couple of days so this gives you a safety net too.

Many people keep fish in chloramine treated tap water, and i would expect most of those did fish in cycles.
 
It really shouldn’t pose any issue at all other than a little more water changes. Just keep in mind that if .3ppm is what’s coming out of the tap you don’t want to be changing 90% water every day trying to get it under .5ppm


Once the tanks established, .3ppm from the tap is not an issue. The tank should be able to cycle that out in a few hours then it’s all over till the next water change
 
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