First off, I'd like to say I am already educated in general fish keeping and know about cycling the tank and everything now. My current problem comes from when I was not as educated. I was planning on getting a small above ground pond and decided to look up a good way to introduce the beneficial bacteria. I found a website that told me to put in a lot of ammonia every single day until the nitrites started going up, etc. I bought the API Freshwater test kit and of course my dumb brain decided not to read how exactly to test the water. I tested it incorrectly and ended up pouring in almost a whole jug of ammonia into one of my 27 gallon tubs since no ammonia was showing up in my tests. Yeah, I know. Absolutely stupid. Once I finally decided to read the instructions and redo the test, my ammonia was so high that it turned black. I did a lot of water changes daily and it stuck to 50 ppm since that time. I got my pond a couple weeks ago and thought the ammonia wouldn't really transfer over there with my 2 huge sponge filters, since it's 110 gallons for 3 Butterfly Telescope Goldfish, 1 small Black Moor, and 1 small Fantail. Plenty of space! For more than the past month, it's still been reading 50 ppm. I still do water changes now frequently and use Seachem Stability as well as Seachem AmGuard. No change. On top of that, my fish have now contracted Ich, because I didn't QT some new plants I added to the pond. I have already got Seachem ParaGuard, so I'm fine in that point. I just have no idea what to do with the ammonia situation!!! Please help!!!!
Help!!! Emergency Ammonia Problem!!!
- Thread starter SimoneJ
- Start date
Shoot...I just tested it and it showed me 50 ppm ammonia. Oh my gosh... I use the tap water in my house and of course dechlorinate it with Prime, but this is very surprising. I will be calling the water company and any other place I can call about this, because I cannot keep fish if this is the issue...I'm astounded.
I would be pretty surprised if ammonia in your tap didn't get converted to nitrate before it actually hit your pond.
Check against a known source of water, like bottled and/or distilled... Or get a second opinion on the test, like have a pet store test for you.
Check against a known source of water, like bottled and/or distilled... Or get a second opinion on the test, like have a pet store test for you.
I did. The ammonia tested 0 ppm in there. Sorry for the late reply. It looks like I'll be getting an RO DI unit luckily since nobody in my house wants to drink water with ammonia like that. I hope my fish will hold on until then though. I know the bacteria should convert the ammonia in the 24 hours Prime detoxifies it, but for some reason it's not doing that. I even got Seachem Stability to put in more bacteria, but no change.
I already tested it against the bottled water I use. 0ppm as expected. It looks like I'll be getting an RO DI unit luckily since nobody in my house wants to drink water with ammonia like that. I hope my fish will hold on until then though. I know the bacteria should convert the ammonia in the 24 hours Prime detoxifies it, but for some reason it's not doing that. I even got Stabilty(Seachem) to put in more bacteria, but no change. I'll be calling my water company tomorrow when they open.
Maybe it's just me but I am confused here. What test kit are you using that it shows you 50 ppm of ammonia? Could you show us a picture of the test tube and card while testing? Just 5 ppm of ammonia in tapwater is high, 50ppm is insanely high. Could you mean .50? or are you talking about nitrates maybe?
And you have fish living in this water that is showing 50 ppm ammonia? They would definitely be dead so something is not right here.
And you have fish living in this water that is showing 50 ppm ammonia? They would definitely be dead so something is not right here.
I'm using the API Freshwater Master Test Kit. The nitrite shows up as 0ppm and nitrate shows up at like 5.0 ppm. It is showing me 0.50 ppm at ammonia. Sorry, I thought I put the period there. I heard from some people that 0.50 is even too high. What do you think? Maybe I will get another set and test it with that, because this is weird. I don't know.
