Help ASAP! Ammonia in clean tap! Bio-spira, cycling questions

Stara'lfur

Stara'lfur

AC Members
May 19, 2008
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Southern Cali
Fish in danger! Help :(

I got 4 new bettas on tuesday, divided my already set up 5 gallon with my first betta in it to put one in, so it has 2 bettas now. put the other 3 in a new divided 10 gallon tank. i added bio-spira into both tanks when adding the new fish.

i tested both tanks with the api liquid test kit and got this today:

5 gallon:
Amonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 5

But! For my 10 gallon I got:
Ammonia: .25 (maybe slightly higher? It's hard to tell the difference in color between the .25 & .5 on this kit)
Nitrite: .25
Nitrate: 5

when i got the fish i tested my pure tap water (aged, treated with aquasafe) and i freaked out because i got an ammonia reading. i tried adding more aqua safe, and when i did that it seemed to get rid of the ammonia (due to chloramines?) and it was back to 0 so i thought i just didnt add enough. well maybe that 2nd reading was wrong because i just tested my aged tap again (with some extra aqua safe added!) and it's at .25!! my aged treated clean water still has ammonia in it. so changing the water wont even help! what do i do?

i have some bottled water but the ph and hardness and stuff is probably totally different than whats already in the tanks, and i cant always use bottled water, i'm so worried nooww.
 
pre98zetec said:
are you making sure you shake the second bottle of the test kit good? Sometimes if you don't you can get false readings.
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yes

edit: someone on another forum suggested i use prime, would that make my tap water safe to use? do they sell it at wal-mart?

could i just add prime to my already aged water that has quite a bit of aquasafe in it, or do i need to start over with new water? which means i'd have to wait a day or more until i could do a water change right?
 
Last edited:
That's weird the 5 gallon reads no ammonia, the 10g does, and so does pure tap water.

Do you have any Prime? I recently moved tanks and was getting 1ppm ammonia, 1 ppm nitrite, i overdosed it 5 times and within 2 hours everything was back to 0.. and has stayed there.
 
I dont have any, i edited my last post asking about it! See my questions above...

edit: also about the 5 gallon it might be because i had it set up for a few months already and i think it might ahve already been cycled, so even when i've added new ammonia-y water it gets it back in check.. but i only had bad test strips before and just got the api test kit which is why i found out about the ammonia in my tap water just recently :( I got some bad advice on another forum saying everything i was doing was fine when it wasn't..
 
jm1212 said:
if you add Prime, you will not have to worry about the 0.25 ammoina or aging the water. you will be able to add it right to the tank.
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Ok, would that mess up the cycle or bio-spira or anything? I could just go buy it today and add it?

Does anyone know if they sell it at walmart? I wish I had ordered some with my order from dr's foster and smith a week ago... darn. it's so expensive at petco/petsmart.
 
pre98zetec said:
Walmart only sells stresscoat (atleast mine does). You could call and check. I ordered mine from Big Al's Online, 10.99 for a 500ml bottle.
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Yeah ordering cheap online would be nice and all but i need it today so i guess its not an option!
 
it's not really expensive in the long run. . . prime is very concentrated so even though it seems like you are spending more on it, you have to use quite a bit less than other dechlorinators and it will last longer.
 
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