yikes,amonia in tap water

[zeebo]

doing tests, realized 2 of my tanks have amonia, fully cycled for a few years. I tested my tap and have 0.10 amonia in my tap. Called the water dept and they confirmed there could be amonia as a by-product as they use chlorine, and after hearing that much , my mind went blank, except hearing him say this could continue or not....

So I do daily wc's, and have had to add more Prime the past few days since noticing this problem. Has anyone else experienced this ? I have always had 0 amonia in my tanks till now.

I am almost afraid to do wc's now , knowing I am adding amonia.

Since this finding , I have decided to cut back on my 10% daily wc's, but this is freaking me out. Anyone else have this happen and what was done to resolve it ? thanks

 

[bigbird]

i would not freak out. If you do water changes, then Seachem prime will remove all nasties and thus eliminate this for you. Just make sure you add this. cheers jk :thumbup:

 

[zeebo]

hi jk, I do use Prime, and still found that 2 of my 3 tanks have amonia. So I added more Prime, but finding it in the tanks really unsettled me

At first I had no idea where it was coming from, so re-tested, got same readings. Then completely checked both tanks for dead fish, and found nothing. So next was test tap and found the source. A call to water co comfirmed it.

So basically you are saying it is ok to have amonia in the tanks as long as I use Prime ? ( I do use it every wc ) and should I cut back on daily wc's or go back to to my 10% daily wc routine ? thanks

 

[Lornek8]

The ammonia I believe if from the breakdown of chloromine, the form of chlorine the water company uses. Prime should neutralize the ammonia but it may still show up in the tests due to the nature of the test. Seachem (the manufacturers of prime) have an faq on their website about it. You shouldn't have to worry about the ammonia.

 

[Lornek8]

Here's the faq.
http://www.seachem.com/support/FAQs/Prime.html

 

[zeebo]

thanks jk and Lorne, appreciate the info , and the Seachem read . Will go back to my daily 10% wc's and no worries. At the time I found it, I had never remembered hearing of such in tap , so yeah, I was freaking. Many thanks guys !

seems always something new for me to learn in fishkeeping...

 

[zeebo]

ok, back to being temporarily confused, but can I add fish to these tanks? Sounds like I can add a few at a time as normal, right ?

I am slowly trying to get most of the fish out of the 20g and put them into the 30g so I can use the 20g for a q-tank.

thanks,

 

[Lornek8]

Yes you can add fish but it should be slowly as usual.

 

[zeebo]

ok , thanks Lorne, just checking

 

[bigbird]

bonus points for you for having a Q tank. This is rule number 3 for any good and caring fishkeeper, a basic good Q tank. cheers jk :thumbup:

 

[zeebo]

yep you are right about q=tanks, but I must confess, I did not use one before and added some new fish to my main tank. BIG mistake. It took me nearly 2 months to rid all the nasties they brought along. It was terrifying at times because I would treat for one thing ,and 2 days later another prob would pop up ..and so on. My 2 L128's are in that tank and I did not want to loose them. So q-tank before anybody new goes in the other tanks !:yes:

 

[Bigjohnnofish]

to me you dont have much to worry about.... our tap water comes from mundaring weir (in western australia) and it normally contains 1.0ppm of ammonnia... and odd occasions i have gotten 2-3ppm and a couple times 5ppm of ammonia in the tap water.... :wb:

occasionally i get a well established tank crashing and skyrocking ammonia occurs... i like to keep a couple tanks available for emergency transfers of fish...

but i age my water now for at least 2 days and have airstone and pump in the reservoir to air off all the ammonia before it gets used for water changes...

to make things more interesting we have chloramine in the water also... plus a host of other chemicals... at times up to 113 different chemicals are added to our tap water... now thats scary :cry:

 

[zeebo]

wow, I did not realize this could happen till people responded. We also have chloramides in our tap too. Seems always something with fishkeeping :dk: