Ammonia in my Tap Water, how can I fix this?

[Spencer]

I have just recently moved and checked my tap water and its showing ammonia .50 -1.0 by the color chart.
How's the best way to correct this? I use Prime and I did go get some ammno chips and put in my filter.
Cant see how doing water changes when there is allready ammonia in my water is going to help my fish since
water changes is suppose to take out the bad stuff..... any suggestions on what I can do to fix this?
I tested the water in my tank 24 hours after my water change and its still showing a trace of ammonia.

[Jeff O]

Almost ALL tap water will have some amonia. This is normal. Prime is all you need 0.5 levels aren't going to hurt your fish 0 is ideal but 0.5 isn't going to do anything.
-Jeff

[troysdiiscus]

agree with Jeff, all tap has this as a bacterial agent, if it has chloramine, prime will break this apart to non toxic levels. Your biofilter, if established will absorb it.

[dagray]

Put the water in a plastic barrel (I use rubbermaid garbage cans) with an airstone to agitate the surface of the water and help circulate the water and the ammonia should disipate and evaporate. putting some Prime in there isn't a bad idea but remember one capful of prime (more or less) is enough to treat many gallons of water (close to 50 gallons I believe).

Dave

[troysdiiscus]

degray, are you saying if you age your water that will evaporate ammonia????

Put the water in a plastic barrel (I use rubbermaid garbage cans) with an airstone to agitate the surface of the water and help circulate the water and the ammonia should disipate and evaporate. putting some Prime in there isn't a bad idea but remember one capful of prime (more or less) is enough to treat many gallons of water (close to 50 gallons I believe).

Dave

[Poco]

Put the water in a plastic barrel (I use rubbermaid garbage cans) with an airstone to agitate the surface of the water and help circulate the water and the ammonia should disipate and evaporate. putting some Prime in there isn't a bad idea but remember one capful of prime (more or less) is enough to treat many gallons of water (close to 50 gallons I believe).

Dave

I dont think ammonia evaporates by aging.

[dagray]

I am saying that in some cases that by circulating the water with a pump or airstone at the bottom of a barrel creating surface agitation that you may be able to rid your amonia. It may take a week or so but the amonia will disipate to at least a lower level.

If you spill bleach (chlorine) on the floor and wipe it up the residue eventually evaporates and if you spill ammonia on the floor it will evaporate leaving less ammonia on the floor than when you started so in theory running surface agitation will rid many of the negative elements that are gasses.

If you don't think this is enough or if the process doesn't happen fast enough you can add some Prime or Ammo lock or other water conditioner to remove what is left. Remember though that with Prime if you aren't using an amonia test kit made by Seachem you will get a false positive and if you use API Stress Coat you will get a false positive for Nitrate. If the problem is chlorine or chloramine you can add 1000mg vitamin C (crushed up tablets added to water) and within 48 hours the asorbic acid in the Vitamin C will bind to the chlorine/chloramine atom rendering it neutral (USDA reference as well as water quality book by Joe Gargas and personal testing with a chlorine test kit using a reagent). For high amonia levels water change, water change, water change; but for low levels agitation should (note the word should not the word will) lower the amonia levels further.

Keep in mind I also live in the Oregon desert and replace five gallons a week to keep up with evaporation (I keep one tank lid open to facilitate the evaporation to get some humidity in the air in the house).

Is my suggestion perfect? no. Can it work? yes. Is it an overnight fix? probably not.

Dave

[otpi]

That's basically using your barrel as a bio-filter with very little surface area. Add a sponge filter to up the surface area and it will be even faster :p

[cichlidsickness]

If you have a municipal water source they probably will ammonia to the water to change the chlorine into chloramines for better disinfection. I run a water plant and some times the ammonia to chlorine ratio gets out of sync and you will receive free ammonia or ammonia that hasnt been tied up by the chlorine. So keep an eye on it because it is subject to change at any time. Either way I couldnt agree more with aging your water and tying the ammonia up with prime or Ammo lock. Plus what could be better than have multiple buckets of water lying around the house and running experiments on them :)

[rubinsteinnyc]

cloram-x won't do the trick?

[troysdiiscus]

yes its in a powder form, I believe. Its a water conditioner like prime or safe that will neutralize chloramine, ammonia and chlorine to detox to a safe level.

[Elliots]

Be careful with the powdered form! Measure carefully and disslove it in water before adding it to your tank. DO NOT ADD THE POWDER DIRECTLY TO YOUR AQUARIUM no matter what the instructions say. There have been postings on SD of problems with powders but if you are careful I would not worry.

[rubinsteinnyc]

supposedly it could be used for drinking water no? I think Hans uses it on his fish house

[rubinsteinnyc]

supposedly it could be used for drinking water no? I think Hans uses it on his fish house too

[Spencer]

Thanks for the responses. I age my water 24 to 48 hours before making water changes.
I still show ammonia when I use a API test kit, will this test kit give the false poz reading?
At what level does the ammonia pose a problem? I tested it again this morning and the color
is closer to 1.0 instead of 0.5.

[troysdiiscus]

API will give you a false positive, sea chem test kits will give you readings for NH3 (free ammonia) and NH4 down to 0.05 levels (think thats right) so it gives you toxic reading if present. Or you can get the ammonia alert at LFS that sits inside your tank showing you if toxic ammonia is present.

[rubinsteinnyc]

supposedly it could be used for drinking water no? I think Hans uses it on his fish house too

[MSD]

I'm sorry but I have never seen more mis-information in one thread in my life. You all better read some stickies and info on the nitrogen cycle re: evaporating ammonia.

[lipadj46]

Be careful with the powdered form! Measure carefully and disslove it in water before adding it to your tank. DO NOT ADD THE POWDER DIRECTLY TO YOUR AQUARIUM no matter what the instructions say. There have been postings on SD of problems with powders but if you are careful I would not worry.

I add safe directly to my tank all the time, sometimes my fish eat it thinking it is food, again with no issues. They don't use chloramines here yet which is nice, nearly all water conditioners will take care of chloramines until your bio filter eats the ammonia, except for the potassium thiosulfate based ones.

[opelgary]

lower your ph to 6.5