ammonia in tap water

[dave76]

my tap water has .50 ppm of ammonia in it I use water conditioner and it has only lowered to .25 in about 6 hours is this normal? any advice on any specific products to use to help lower this? Also what can I put in my tank to lower my ph to about 7.0 without using chemicals?

[wetmanNY]

Ammonia in your tapwater signals chloramine (chlorine + ammonia). Get in touch with your Midlothian or county water dept. for your "consumer confidence report" on water quality. (They have a website no doubt.)

Are you using AmQuel? Read the directions about false positive testing for NH3.

Test for high KH (alkalinity) in your limestone area. To dilute your "hardness" you need rainwater, distilled water, or reverse osmosis equipment. No chemicals.

Do you have a modern covered filtered rainbarrel yet? What are you waiting for?

[dave76]

I am using tetra aqua safe, does this test for false ammonia? my current ammonia is .25ppm, if I do a waterchange it goes up to .50 ppm? I have a penguin 330 filter on the tank, the ph is around 7.6

[wetmanNY]

C'mon dave, now that you know what the question is, ask tetra, find out, come back here, post what you discovered, and give back some useful information! That's how it works! That's how we know stuff, all of us.

The 0.5ppm ammonia is what the tapwater registers before you've done anything to it, right? Or is it more? Check with your water dept. about chloramine.

[dave76]

yes it does test .5ppm fresh from tap. I will find out.

[JSchmidt]

Bet you have chloraminated water... does it test slighly higher (say, 1 ppm) after you treat with dechlorinator?

Jim

[dave76]

it was .25 ppm when I tested it initially, and .5 ppm after the water change, then a couple of hours later it was back to .25 ppm.

I have a new filter on order from big al's hopefully this will help. The aqua safe says that it can reduce clorine and ammonia? Can anyone confirm this to be true, I have sent tetra an email with no response as of yet.