Chloramines - Removing Ammonia

[Clawhammer]

Hi all.

I live in Portland and the city adds terrible chloramines to the water. After treating with Prime, I am left with .25ppm of ammonium. How does everyone go about removing this?

I have set up a water aging tank with a small internal filter. However, the filter is too small to remove .25 ppm of ammonia overnight. I have new internal filter coming today (of course uncycled). I also have zeolite coming today, which I will use in the larger internal filter.

Anything else I could be doing? My current water parameters are 0 - ammonia, 0 - nitrite 3- Nitrate. Should I hold off on doing a water change until I get the ammonia out of the new water?

I hate chloramines.

[Second Hand Pat]

What you might be seeing is a false positive after breaking the chlorine and ammonia apart with the prime. The prime should render the ammonia harmless to the fish. A little research is warranted here.
Pat

[Clawhammer]

Thanks for your guidance Pat.

It was my working assumption the ammonia that I am seeing is ammonium that was produced when the chloramines were split by prime and then the resulting ammonia was converted into ammonium (thats why I called it ammonium in my OP). It is my understanding that while less toxic, ammonium is still bad for fish, so I am trying to remove it from the water before adding to the tank.

Can you confirm that I do not need to stress about this ammonium and that I should go ahead and use water treated with Prime yet still reading .25ppm ammonium? Its just that the tank has no ammonia or nitrite, so it feels like I am replacing good water with less good water.

Thanks for your patience, it really is reassuring to speak to someone with your level of experience, I am a newbie with discus (lots of planted tank experience).

[Second Hand Pat]

Hi Eric, I can not personally recommend it is harmless as I do not personally use prime (hence the recommendation for research). I am on well water therefore have no chloramine in my water. Many here on the forum do use prime to render the chloramine or chlorine harmless to the fish so was hoping those with personally experience would chime in here.
Pat

[Second Hand Pat]

Suggest you read the description here http://www.seachem.com/prime.php.
Pat

[Clawhammer]

Thanks again Pat, good read. I am even more comfortable now with using water with .25ppm ammonium on all of my fish besides discus. I have a heavily planted tank with german electric blue rams, who seem to be doing great. However, one of my discus has been breathing heavy and now hiding, and I haven't been able to figure out the issue. I was thinking it may be related to this.

Does anyone add chloramine laced tap water treated with Prime directly to their discus tank who can share their thoughts / experience?

[pitdogg2]

Yep I do at times of large wc never a problem. Most of mine is aged but there are times when it's straight from tap. I mostly use safe powdered prime

[Akili]

Eric have you considered filtering with chloramine reduction cartridges ?

[Clawhammer]

Thanks ditdogg2, that makes me less stressed about doing water changes

Akili - Appreciate the lead. I am going to look into something liked this as a prefilter for my aging barrel.