High ammonia content in my tap water, please help

[heavyp83]

My ammonia out of the tap is testing at .50, about the third notch down on my chart. Has anyone else experienced this ever? Is it possible that the water company is doing sometihng weird right now? Will a carbon block remedy this? Thanks

[RandalB]

It sounds like your water utility is using chloramine.. That would give you the ammonia readings.

A standard carbon block filter won't do much for it at all.

RandalB

[tpl*co]

How about using Seachem Prime? It neutralizes ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, chlorine and chloramine. You'd probably have to experiment with how much prime it would take to lower your tap water.

[heavyp83]

Im using prime right now, but even at high doses it soesnt seem to help much. Any ideas?

[Eddie]

Do you age your water and how do you know that Prime isn't helping. I have a high chloramine amount in my tap water. I simply add Prime to my circulating storage water which circulates 24 hours and my ammonia readings are zilch(0). My fish are happier than ever. ;)

[Carol_Roberts]

Some people run a cycled sponge filter in their storage water to convert the ammonia to nitrate

[kjmillerfw]

You might want to try ChlorAm-X ChlorAm-X (http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:ySikfSa4zzIJ:www.aquascienceresearc h.com/cloram-x.html+chloram-x&hl=en)...I get mine from JEHMCO.

It's a powdered form of Amquel and it works good for water with Chloramines. Prime will work well if your pH is under 8.0. However, if it's above 8.0, once the chlorine/ammonia bond is broken, the ammonia may still be toxic.

If using Prime or Amquel, and your pH is under 8.0, the ammonia can still show a reading but they claim it is non-toxic. There is an ammonia test kit that will eliminate these false/positive readings, but I don't remember of-hand what it's called.

I hope that made sense...

Kathy

[heavyp83]

Thanks everyone, I tihnk ill stick a sponge in there and see if it helps.

[jeep]

If you place a sponge filter in there, you'll need to make sure you don't have any chlorine in your water as it'll kill the bio...

My water company uses both chlorine and chloramines. I use Prime and have no ammonia related problems...

[RyanH]

If your nitrate readings are high, you may want to consider using an ozone filter to remove it. Eventually even nitrates can be a detriment if in high enough quantity.

hth!
-Ryan

[kjmillerfw]

Some people run a cycled sponge filter in their storage water to convert the ammonia to nitrate

I do that too as a backup.