Can ammonia go away by itself?

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rrsamir

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Aug 8, 2020
Messages
4
Hi all,

I'll try and explain this succinctly as possible.

I have a 7 gallon tank. I was cycling it fishless for a month, feeding the tank with fish food for ammonia. Now I've had one small halfmoon betta male in there for two weeks. This is my first time owning fish.

I test the water with the API Freshwater master kit every day. The pH sits at 6.8-7.2, depending on how recently I changed the water. The ammonia barely rises - the highest it's ever gotten was 0.5 ppm, which was the day I added the fish. There's never any nitrites or nitrates. However, the ammonia always returns to 0 ppm without my interference. I've had the LFS test my water too for verification (I live next door to them, so it's easy to do so).

Their theory is that my plants (and the algae) are eating up all the nitrites/nitrates. It's a small tank with a lot of plants that are all doing really well, including a huge anubias which is going crazy sprouting new, massive leaves.

I haven't had any problems so far, but as a beginner, I find it really frustrating and disconcerting that my nitrite/nitrate reading always comes back as 0 ppm. I feel like I'm doing something wrong or unsafe for the fish, or maybe my tank isn't really cycled. Has anyone experienced or heard of this before, or have any theories about why the ammonia might be able to go away by itself?

Thanks for reading!
 
Yeah it’s probably the plants. My tank has been up for 18 months and I never have any nitrate. My tank also contains plants.
 
Thanks so much guys, that's very reassuring! I hadn't heard of anyone else who had this happen in a tank until now.
 
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