Ammonia in tap water

[Iryna]

Hi guys
I just realized that my tap water has ammonia in it, yesterday and today was 1ppm. I called water company and they said that they use ammonia to help with chlorine and it is usually should be 0.25-0.50ppm in my water.
Because my tank just finished cycling I don’t want to take a chance and ruined all my hard work. It is hard to do PWCs with ammonia already in your tap water. Did anybody has good results with ammonia removal pads, the one you put inside of your filter? Any advice please.
Thank you

 

[Autumnsky]

That is awful info from the water company! I would be using filtered water, or bottled or RO/DI water from a fish store and remineralize it.

Alternatively you could get a trash can or 5G buckets and run ammonia detoxifier /chemical media to get the water to start out with good water parameters with your tank!

The similar thing happened to me when I began keeping shrimp. Mine was only .25 ammonia but I did find out it was from the water, yuck!

 

[jason19]

Agree with AS, I too have the same issues here in Ireland. I use filtered water only when doing WC's.

 

[Iryna]

Hi guys thank you for advice. I think I will go with a bucket and try to remove ammonia first before do PWCs. I just tested my filtered water I have
Pur pitcher to filter water for drinking and I noticed it is kind of big difference in pH, KH, DH than my tap water but it is still not removing ammonia from tap water

 

[rlederer]

Get yourself a R/O setup. It's maybe $200 but you'll save a lot of time and money and effort in the long run.

 

[fishwonder]

Your water company is using Chloramine to treat your water which uses ammonia and chlorine. Yes, usually less than .5 ppm is the normal. Make sure your bio media is using good flow through media like foam or pot scrubbies and not any hard media. Need to have the water flow through all your media and not around it to oxidize ammonia the fastest.