hadj2887

I recently had a spike in ammonia in my fish tank soon after doing a water change. I wasn't sure why until I tested my tap water. I've been getting a reading of about .5 ppm for ammonia in my tap water and i am now unable to do water changes because of this. I really have no idea what to do about this and any help will be greatly appreciated.

sgould

Perhaps someone else can offer another alternative, but the 2 options I see are:

1) Continue your water changes normally, but switch to a conditioner that also binds ammonia. Prime is a good one, but there are others. This will chemically "lock" the ammonia in your tap water so that it does not harm your fish until your biological filter can take care of it.

2) Switch to using bottled water instead of tap water. This is inconvenient, expensive, and would not contain beneficial minerals like your tap water.

If you can't tell, I favor option 1.

armadillo

Option one: My fish survived an awfully high (reached 5 a couple of times!) and long (lasted 5 days or something, at such high levels) spike in ammonia when I was using Prime. Not sure if long-term exposure of lower levels is good, but you don't have much choice.

Option two: Perhaps there is cheap mineral water for sale in those huge tubs? It is indeed very unhandy.

Luniyn

What's the pH of your tank? A low pH (i.e. 7 or lower) will be helpful in that the majority of the ammonia in your tank won't be harmful to the fish at all (note I'm not suggesting lowering or messing with your pH at all, I'm just saying that if you have a low pH in your tank you have some buffer). The more you go over that pH of 7 the more of the ammonia becomes toxic. With a high pH then I would suggest getting Prime or Amquel+ for the tank, but even still a 0.5ppm reading of ammonia in your tap water will not cause a spike of any kind. When you say you got a spike, how high did it go? A reading of 0.5ppm in your tap water would translate to much less when added to your tank. Even if you replaced 100% of your tanks water, it would still only be 0.5ppm total in the tank. And even at a pH of 7.5, and temp of 77oF (25oC), only 0.009ppm of that would actually be toxic to your fish (needs to be 0.02ppm before they would have any reaction to it). So in reality a 0.5ppm reading from your tap is no big deal. Keep going ahead with your water changes as normal. In fact if you do the changes regularly enough, the tanks good bacteria will get used to the slightly higher ammonia contents and adjust accordingly.

hadj2887

I tested the tap water every day for about a week, and by the end of the week, the ammonia levels were back to 0. I guess it was just a temporary thing.

armadillo

Not that I want to give you sleepless nights or anything, but let's hope it doesn't temporarily go up really high next time. Sounds really annoying. I never knew you could get ammonia in the water.

Gunnie

Definately keep a bottle of Prime or Amquel plus handy in case this happens again. Many folks' water properties change during the summertime when fertilizers and other chemicals are used causing readings of ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates. Some folks have to permanently use a conditioner that treats these things.