Newbie – Confused about Chloramine / Ammonia
We set up our 16g bowfront tank this weekend, and added a couple of dwarf gouramis on Sunday evening to start out with. One thing that alarmed me at first was the apparent .50 ammonia reading. Even untreated water straight out of the tap was showing this. After reading here for a while, I determined that our water is probably treated with chloramine, which, if I understand correctly, will throw off ammonia test strips when it is neutralized by aquarium water treatments, or even by the substances present in the strips themselves.
I went ahead and added some Ammo-Lock, just in case (supposedly it will not interfere with the biological cycle), and I realize that it too can result in unreliable ammonia test results (the neutralized ammonia still shows up on the test).
I did a 1/3 water change yesterday, and will continue to do this daily until the tank is cycled (no nitrite spike so far), and I used Ammo-Lock for the replacement water as well... our water probably doesn't have ammonia in it, but I'm using it just to be sure.
Anyway, I'm just puzzled now about testing for ammonia (not only right now during the cycling phase, but later as well). Assuming that my tap water does not contain ammonia, and that it's just the chloramine interfering with the test strips, do I have any options for doing an accurate ammonia test? Are there any water treatments that handle chloramine in such a way that it doesn't show up as ammonia on the tests? Or maybe a different test kit? I'm using Mardel now.
Thanks!
--Mike
We set up our 16g bowfront tank this weekend, and added a couple of dwarf gouramis on Sunday evening to start out with. One thing that alarmed me at first was the apparent .50 ammonia reading. Even untreated water straight out of the tap was showing this. After reading here for a while, I determined that our water is probably treated with chloramine, which, if I understand correctly, will throw off ammonia test strips when it is neutralized by aquarium water treatments, or even by the substances present in the strips themselves.
I went ahead and added some Ammo-Lock, just in case (supposedly it will not interfere with the biological cycle), and I realize that it too can result in unreliable ammonia test results (the neutralized ammonia still shows up on the test).
I did a 1/3 water change yesterday, and will continue to do this daily until the tank is cycled (no nitrite spike so far), and I used Ammo-Lock for the replacement water as well... our water probably doesn't have ammonia in it, but I'm using it just to be sure.
Anyway, I'm just puzzled now about testing for ammonia (not only right now during the cycling phase, but later as well). Assuming that my tap water does not contain ammonia, and that it's just the chloramine interfering with the test strips, do I have any options for doing an accurate ammonia test? Are there any water treatments that handle chloramine in such a way that it doesn't show up as ammonia on the tests? Or maybe a different test kit? I'm using Mardel now.
Thanks!
--Mike
