Ammonia in tap water treated with conditioner.

[thunderwaved]

Hi, since my ammonia levels in my tank read .5, I was going to do a 50 percent water change.

However, I decided to test the ammonia in my tap water that I treated with water conditioner and it also read .5.

What choices do I have to lower the ammonia?

 

[happygirl65]

Well, with ammonia coming right from the tap you will have to keep a close eye on things...do you currently have fish in the tank?

You need to get a nice supply of beneficial bacteria going, and perhaps do smaller volume of water changes...probably not more than 25%

At this point I would recommend getting some low light plants in there like hornwort to soak up the excess nutrients. Stem plants are your best bet. It will help use up the ammonia.

What size tank do you have and how much and what type of lighting do you have? I might be able to offer suggestions of other plants that would work in your set up...keeping it low tech can be quite rewarding.

 

[Mark Hewitt]

Test again without using your water conditioner first.

 

[neilanh]

Many municiple water supplies add chlorine/chloramine to the water to treat it. These molecules can register a false positive on our hobby grade ammonia tests. I wouldn't worry too much about what you have coming from your tap, just make sure you're using a good dechlorinator (I recommend Prime) and you'll be just fine.

Another test you can do is to let your tap water sit out for 24 hours and then test it. Most of the chloramine should offgas by then (agitate the water from time to time) and then test and see what you get.

 

[JerryO]

1 ppm ammonia out of the tap for me. I do my aquarium maintenance on tuesdays and treat my water with prime and now that I am cycled I am back to 0 ppm total ammonia on thursday / friday.

While using prime you will need something that test for free ammonia (seachem test) rather than total ammonia (api test)

For a while it took 6 days for my tank to get back to 0 ppm total ammonia even after my cycle was complete (or so I thought) so just keep using prime and everything will work out.

 

[jsoong]

0.5 of ammonia in your water is most likely from chloramines they added in the water as disinfectant. <Chloramine is broken down to ammonia & chlorine by the dechlorinator.> The ammonia is bound & is not harmful. Your bio-filter will take care of that in a day or so.