Ammonia Vs Nitrate Issues

All right so I was a bad fish keeper and I delayed my water changes until longer than normal til today, then on my way home from work I saw our city bleeding the water lines which always puts ammonia into my tap water. So currently my tap water has .25 ppm of ammonia in it. I have multiple tanks that needed clean today first being a #1 a 20gal reading 0 ammonia, 6.8 ph, and 40 ppm nitrate, nitrite is 0 ppm.

#2 The next tank is a 10 gallon full of fry reading 0 ammonia, 6.6 ph, 0 nitrites, probably 80 ppm.

#3 The last tank is a 10 gallon with maybe .15 - .25 ppm ammonia (it’s closer to yellow than the tap but it’s not the nice clean yellow), 7.0 ph, 0 nitrites, and 10-20 ppm nitrate.

So the tap ph is about 7.4 - 7.6 and tap ammonia is .25 ppm (currently, has been worse in the past.) So should I use the tap water to do my water changes? I could buy some distilled or spring water at the store or wait.. waiting makes me nervous. It could take up to a week for the water to get back to the 0 ammonia. I do have prime but it only detoxifies the ammonia for 24 hours,.. could I add it daily after a large water change without daily water changes? I did set up a tub with a filter full of zeolite to attempt to preremove to ammonia but I don’t know how long or how well that will work.

 

I would just go with distilled water

 

Think of it this way if your doing say a 25% water change your only adding 25% of .25 so its perfectly safe to use. Your cycle will quickly proccess it.

 

How large a water change do you usually do? My tanks usually manage to process tap ammonia (has varied from 0 to 4.0 at worst) until it hits about 1.0... then it takes my tanks longer to manage the ammonia, but I do 50% water changes. If you did 25% water changes I bet your tank would barely have a blip.

 

The 20 gal I normally clean 25-50% depending on the nitrates. The fry 10 gal I normally do 50% - 80%. (Some of them need to go but I’ve been waiting until they’re able to be sexed so I don’t end up with all males.) The other 10 gal is normally 50%. Between having guests, Father’s Day, and work my cleaning schedule is messed up.
I did clean the 20 gal (35%) and the fry 10 gal (66%.) I used part distilled water and the water that was running through the zeolite. The water that was running through the zeolite was showing 0 ammonia but I only had 6 gallons of it done. I have another 6 gallons running for tomorrow. So I’ll recheck the tanks, tap, and reevaluate tomorrow. Thanks