Ammonia levels still very high! I am about to give up

[Jeffd1979]

I have had my 40 gallon tank now for 4 months... the first 3 months my levels were all fine... no ammonia, no nitrite and very little nitrate...4 weeks ago my nitrate and nitrite levels spiked... ammonia was about .2ppm... well 3 weeks ago they went back to normal but the ammonia levels spiked to about .6ppm.... water is so yellow in the test kit you cannot see though it... has been like this for the last 3 weeks.. have been doing about 30% water changes 2 times a week.. today i did a 70% water change and tested the water 2 hrs later and the ammonia level is still at about .5ppm... I have a emperor 280... what would cause this to happen??? It will not go away for some reason...

i tested the kit on the tap water and it comes up 0ppm
i vaccum the gravel when i do water changes
I have 3 baby angels and 2 albino corries..

[OrionGirl]

Do you have chlorine or chloramines in your water? If you have chloramines, how do you treat them?

[Jeffd1979]

Originally posted by OrionGirl
Do you have chlorine or chloramines in your water? If you have chloramines, how do you treat them?

not sure.. don't know how to test for that..

[Ryoken]

Did you use any Ammo-lock or ammo chips or anything like that? They can give false positives sometimes. With your tank size and load, you shouldn't be having any trouble... Maybe your test kit is bad, have you tried taking a water sample to a LFS and having them test it? What are your current nitrIte and nitrAte levels?

[Jeffd1979]

Originally posted by Ryoken
Did you use any Ammo-lock or ammo chips or anything like that? They can give false positives sometimes. With your tank size and load, you shouldn't be having any trouble... Maybe your test kit is bad, have you tried taking a water sample to a LFS and having them test it? What are your current nitrIte and nitrAte levels?

I used ammo-lock about a week and a half ago... I tested the kit on some tap water and it came up 0ppm.... Nitrate and nitrite levels are fine... The fish seem fine so i am guessing that something is going wrong here.., :(

[Duke107]

Could he be seriously overfeeding, was my problem in the beginning?

[shewlett]

If you can get it, put some BioSpira in there ... it really works.

Questions:

1) Are you siphoning the gravel? Maybe something is decaying in there?

2) Have you tried pulling the filter and inspecting it to see if anything is decaying there? What kind of filter media are you using?

3) What test kit are you using? You might try getting another test kit (different manufacturer) and seeing if you can duplicate your test results. I use the Hagen Nutrafin Ammonia test kit and so far haven't had any problems with it.

[Duke107]

Also if you have high ammonia and low nitrate maybe you have no bio filtration taking place?

[Duke107]

or is that the other way around?

[OrionGirl]

Contact your water utility and ask them what they treat your water with (unless you are on a well). Both chlorine and chloramines, entreated, will kill bacteria in your system and may be preventing the colonies from establishing themselves at a size able to process the waste from your tank.

[Jeffd1979]

here are the answers for all the questions.

1. Not overfeeding.. feed every other day... today was accually the first day i fed them in 5 days.. i was gone on vacation since last friday....

2. yes i siphon the gravel... i do as best i can.. i usually can see a small pile of stuff at the bottom of the bucket..

3. I use an emperor 280 filter system. with the filters from Emperor.. I accaully have 2 filters in there now since there is a place for 2 of them.. thought it might help some... Just cleaned the filters last week in a bucket of water from a water change.

4. I use the ammonia test kit from aquarium pharmaceuticals inc.

[Ryoken]

Originally posted by Duke107
Also if you have high ammonia and low nitrate maybe you have no bio filtration taking place?


That's what I was thinking, but everything was okay for a while at the start, so unless something killed his bacteria... Which brings up Oriongirls thought. Did you treat your water with conditioner to remove chlorine ect. before you put it in the tank Jeff?

If I were you, I wouldn't trust that test kit showing all kinds of ammonia and no nitrate or nitrite. I'd start off by getting a new ammonia test kit (even if it shows tap at zero, that doesn't necessarily mean the test kit is good) or having someone else check it.

Also, I'm not sure on the Ammo-lock, but I know a lot of people have problems testing after they use it, so something could be going on there. I know you had ammonia before you used the ammo-lock, but maybe the ammonia is gone now and you're getting a false reading? Someone who knows more about this will have to help out here.

Duke, it goes Ammonia>NitrIte>NitrAte

[Jeffd1979]

Originally posted by OrionGirl
Contact your water utility and ask them what they treat your water with (unless you are on a well). Both chlorine and chloramines, entreated, will kill bacteria in your system and may be preventing the colonies from establishing themselves at a size able to process the waste from your tank.

I may try to go to my mother in laws house and get a few jugs of their water.. they are on a well..

[Ryoken]

Originally posted by Jeffd1979


I may try to go to my mother in laws house and get a few jugs of their water.. they are on a well..

That's a bad idea unless you know the parameters of the well water (pH, GH, KH) You could get some bottled water maybe, but I wouldn't start adjusting things like that until you have a handle on your current situation.

I HIGHLY doubt your tap water is your problem anyways, as long as you treated it with conditioner to remove chlorine and chloramines before you put it in the tank. If you didn't treat it, get some conditioner, like was mentioned earlier, water with chlorine and chloramines can kill your bacteria - which could be your problem.

[Duke107]

Thanks Ryoken,


I would only caution you about well water, I moved (about 15 KM)and went from city water to well water. I brought as much as I could in 5 gal pails for my 90G tank (only 15 G) and my fish went into shock. I had to remove them ASAP into a bucket for a day while I filtered and adjusted ph and such. There are a lot of things in well water (sulpher, very differant ph, heavy iron and usually very hard water) that may not help your situation. I would continue to resolve the problem with the water you have.

[Jeffd1979]

Originally posted by Ryoken


That's a bad idea unless you know the parameters of the well water (pH, GH, KH) You could get some bottled water maybe, but I wouldn't start adjusting things like that until you have a handle on your current situation.

I HIGHLY doubt your tap water is your problem anyways, as long as you treated it with conditioner to remove chlorine and chloramines before you put it in the tank. If you didn't treat it, get some conditioner, like was mentioned earlier, water with chlorine and chloramines can kill your bacteria - which could be your problem.

I put some conditioner in after i did the water change but i put it in the tank not before i put it in... did i do that wrong?

[shewlett]

To be safe you should condition your tap water before it goes in the tank, use a 5 gallon pail for this and let it sit for at least several hours, preferably overnight, after mixing thoroughly. Once you dump unconditioned tap water into your tank the chlorine and chloramine quickly go to work killing bacteria (that's what they are there for). I don't know how long it takes the conditoner to completely do the job (I use Amquel and NovAqua) but common sense tells me it is not instantaneous unless you have a giant high speed blender on hand.

[JSchmidt]

Originally posted by shewlett
To be safe you should condition your tap water before it goes in the tank, use a 5 gallon pail for this and let it sit for at least several hours, preferably overnight, after mixing thoroughly. Once you dump unconditioned tap water into your tank the chlorine and chloramine quickly go to work killing bacteria (that's what they are there for). I don't know how long it takes the conditoner to completely do the job (I use Amquel and NovAqua) but common sense tells me it is not instantaneous unless you have a giant high speed blender on hand.

Shewlett, that's not accurate. Many fishkeepers add tap water directly to the tank and add dechlor as the tank fills. Dechlorinator works pretty much instantly. If chlorione were the problem, he'd be seeing fish distress and deaths long before the bacteria were affected.

Jeffd1979, now is a good time to get very methodical about all this. First of all, how many fish are in the tank, and how long have they been in it?

Is this the ammonia test kit you have?

http://www.thatpetplace.com/MainPro/itemdy00.aspx?HKW=&TKW=&SKW=F73%2cMAN1044&EDP=1077&T1=F73+1044+0124&PgNo=1

If it is, and you're using AmmoLock2 (or Amquel), you will get inaccurage readings. You need a test kit based on the salicylate reagents, like this one:

http://www.thatpetplace.com/MainPro/itemdy00.aspx?HKW=&TKW=ammonia&SKW=&EDP=24324&T1=F73+0171+0766&PgNo=3

Do you know what your KH (carbonate hardness), GH (general hardness) and pH are? That would be helpful.

Your practices don't sound bad, so I think figuring out the testing situation first to determine whether you do, in fact, have free ammonia, is the place to start.

Good luck,
Jim

[shewlett]

JSchmidt, I believe I am accurate. Do you have any hard evidence that suggests that dechlorinators work instanteously? If the untreated water is tossed in the tank and then the dechlorinator is subsequently applied there must be a time lag of some sort, and there must be a further time lag while the dechlorinator spreads through the tank water. So, it seems likely that some chlorine/ chloramine is getting to the biological media in the filter and elsewhere prior to being neutralized. Many fishkeepers do condition their water prior to introducing it into tanks, I happen to be one of them. Since Jeffd1979 is having a problem it makes sense to eliminate possible causes and it is rather easy to dechlorinate water prior to adding it to the tank. Eliminating variables is part of the "methodical" approach that you espouse.

In closing I'd like to point out that I never made a flat out statement as to veracity or nonveracity, I simply advocated playing it safe and based on the information that had been provided it was the only thing that sprang to mind. I still advocate the cautious approach. If you do have hard evidence that dechlorinators somehow circumvent brownian motion then please present it ... I'm always willing to learn.

[kveeti]

It’s my understanding that dechlorinators use sodium thiosulfate.

Chemistry On-Line:
http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/compounds/faq/thiosulfate.shtml#compounds

a quote: It instantly dechlorinates water, and is used to stop bleaching action in the paper-making industry.

I don't know if this is hard enough evidence, but it works for me.

[Oakley]

Very interesting info, thanks kveeti :)

[JSchmidt]

Dechlorinators work instantly, and it's easy to test. Buy a chlorine/chloramine test kit and fill a bucket of water. Test. You'll see zero chlorine. If you're using a plain dechlorinator (e.g., sodium thiosulfate) on chloriminated water, you'll need twice the dose (two chlorine molecules per each ammonium molecule?), but it should also work instantly. Would a body of water at complete rest take longer? I don't know. I presume that in most tanks, even aging buckets, the same currents that distibute the water will distribute the dechlorinator.

Does it take a minute or two for the dechor to become sufficiently distributed to attack all the chlorine? I don't know. My testing in my aging tanks suggests that several minutes is more than enough, and that vigorous stirring and allowing the water to sit overnight is absolutely unnecessary. That approach won't hurt anything, but there will be no benefit, either.

If adding tap water + dechlorinator direclty to the tank were truly allowing free chlorine to exist for any period of time, you'd see clear fish distress and/or deaths. Ask anyone who has forgot to add the dechlor when adding chlorinated tap water to a tank...

Jim

[shewlett]

I'm not going to nitpick over the definition of "instantly". Dumping dechlorinator in the amounts indicated in the instructions into a body of relatively still water is not going to "instantly" remove chlorine and chloramine unless the principle of brownian motion is simply wrong. Having studied physics I don't believe it is.

Do dechlorinators work fast? I'm sure they do, but in the meantime beneficial bacteria may be getting whacked out, particulary those in the filter media where the dechlorninator hasn't reached yet. No doubt they work fast enough to save the fish from undue stress but that does not mean that a much smaller and simpler organism (e.g. nitfifying bacteria) is not being stressed or outright killed.

Back to the problem at hand. Jeffd1979 (the guy who started this thread and has the ammonia problem) posted "I put some conditioner in after i did the water change but i put it in the tank not before i put it in... did i do that wrong?" I read this to mean that he put the dechlorinator into the tank subsequent to putting the change water in. If that is in fact the case, then clearly dechlorination was not "instant". As to letting conditioned water sit overnight I do it because it allows the pH to settle as opposed to what it is straight out of the tap and it is safe. I see no drawbacks to this process.

[JSchmidt]

There are lots of good reasons to age water, I agree. I don't agree that giving a dechlorinator time to work is one of them. I've tested my water quite a bit, and the results have convinced me that the dechlorinator works sufficiently fast to eliminate any harm to fish and beneficial bacteria when added with the water.

Back on thread:

Jeffd1979: have you tested your water to see if you have ammonia coming out of the tap? Tap water that tests positive for ammonia is a strong indicator that your utility puts chloramines in the water. You often can get levels of 1 ppm, sometimes higher, in chloriminated water. Try testing two samples of tap water, one before and one after adding dechlor. If either show ammonia, you likely have chloramines in your water.

There is still the possibility mentioned earlier that your test results are due to a Nessler based ammonia test being used in the presence of Amquel, AmmoLock2 or Prime.

HTH,
Jim

[shewlett]

As long as one is going to age water in buckets or other containers then there is no harm in adding the dechlorinator after the water is in the bucket and giving it a good stirring. I can think of no good reason not to do it this way. Perhaps someone else can. I prefer to age my water without chlorine and chloramine and see no harm in doing so. For me, it is simpler. I recommended aging water to Jeffd1979 since I think it is good practice. I keep quite a few buckets of aged (and dechlorinated) water in the basement so I have it ready at a moment's notice. I've also tested my water quite a bit over the last thirty odd years and this is what I feel comfortable doing.

Back on thread:

Jeffd1979: As to your ammonia problem it may be that your dechlorinator is breaking the chlorine and ammonia bond present in chloramine but is not doing anything about the leftover ammonia. NovAqua is a case in point and needs to be followed up with Amquel+ or something else to get rid of the ammonia. What brand of dechlorinator are you using? Have you tried asking your local water authority if they are using chloramine?

[PumaWard]

I am not sure if ammo-lock is a carbon type thing, so ignore my post if it is. If it's a liquid. however,

Ammolock converts ammonia (NH3)_to ammonium (NH 4) Ammonium still registers on your test kit, but it is harmless to fish. So, it gives your a false postive...

HTH