Ammonia ? Need Immediate HELP!

to rockbella

listen, if you are o.k. with the money then why don't you just go to Wall Mart and buy spring water, it's $0.64 a gallon. it has no bad stuff in it and you don't have to use any chemicals. you can take all the chemicals back and get money back or store credit if you don't have your recipt. you will be very happy with spring water changes. once you get your readings normal then just do 25% of water change once every two weeks, which is like 20 gallons. if you want to boost your bacteria fast you can still put bacteria in it, it has nothing but bacteria, no chemicals, it has nothing to do with water chemistry, it feeds on waste your fish produses, thus will help you with fish tank maintenence. Note: the PH in spring water needs no adjustment, but it's lower from what you have now, so first few changes put one gallon into main fish tank every 10 minutes, so you can addjust your oscars slowly to new PH.
 
Thanks for breaking it down for me, I'm not that great at math (but rest assured I would have made my husband figure out the easiest way to do it). Thanks for eliminating that need.
Do you think I need to add that much salt? Is it safe and should I do it during a water change or before or after adding BIO-Spira? I'm just trying to get a plan set in order for how to do everything. Should I do the salt tonight after I've tested the water levels so it can get settled before I add the BIO-Spira on Wednesday night?
How often am I supposed to add salt? Is it safe to add Prime and salt in the same day? Too many questions I know. Sorry.
 
BadRoma1 - If I'm not mistaken I have looked at Spring Water at Walmart and it is also purified using Reverse Osmosis (RO). From what I've been reading most people who have written me don't think it's a good idea to use RO water. Thanks for you suggestions though.
 
If I'm not mistaken I have looked at Spring Water at Walmart and it is also purified using Reverse Osmosis (RO).
Click to expand...

Are you sure you're not looking at something labelled, "drinking water" or the like? Spring water is not much of spring water if you strip all of the salts and such out of it with RO. It would seem kind of pointless to go to the trouble of getting spring water just to run it through RO when you can do that with surface water, municipal water, or whatever.
 
to rockbella

forgot to say that don't use salt or anything if you not sure how to doze. you don't have to have salt. P.S. it's o.k. if you overdoze bacteria.
 
rockbella

i'm holding spring water in my hand now and it says that it has been UV light micron filtered and ozonated.
 
rockbella

spring water is not RO. And also it says on the salt that it can be safely used with water conditioners and ammonia and chloramine eliminators.
 
rockbella.

what are you doing? you are putting too much stuff into your tank. your fish is going to be fine, but eventualy you will get tired of all that chemistry. i was like you once and lost many fish to tap water even with chlorine and chloramine removers. now i have discus and i use nothing but spring water and boost bacteria every water change when i wash my biologycal filter. i have evertything you have that i haven't used for a long time.
 
0.64 per gallon sounds inexpensive, but FWIW, to do a 50% water change on a 75 g tank would cost you roughly $24 per week in spring water. Not too bad? This comes out to a whopping $1248 per year, that's your brand new 108 gallon tank, stand, lighting, filtration, substrate, etc. right there. Hey, If you've got the $1200 to burn, I'm happy for ya, I know that I don't.

Besides, there's no guarantee that "spring water" is of any higher quality than tap. For one thing, bottled waters have very little regualtion - this is one of the reasons you never hear of mishaps associated with bottled water compared with municipal water supplies. Municipal supplies are required by law to report to the media any time anything goes wrong. Bottled water purveyors simply cover any problems and keep them quiet.

With a proper dechorinator (Prime or Amquel) there's nothing wrong with the tap, so why spend money on designer water? Since her problem isn't with the water, there's no need for a change.

Yes, a KH kit is key. All new hobbyists should have pH, KH, NH3, NO2, and NO3 kits. After you've been at it for a while, you'll realize that you no longer need to test, you'll be able to predict what's in the water before hand.

Adding salt is simple. Just dissolve it into new water and add. So do it after your water change, dose the new water. After you've dose the tank, only dose the new water added. In other words, your first dose will be 1 tsp. per gallon, 75 tsp - about 1 1/2 cups - yes, that is the amount required, just be happy it's not a pond, they reference by pounds of salt!

After a 50% water change only add 1 tsp. per gallon of new water, so roughly 38 tsp. Yes, it's perfectly safe in the short term and much better than NO2 poisoning and brown blood. Only add the salt once and then just replace what you remove as indicated above.

Salt doesn't evaporate, or go anywhere for that matter. After NO2 goes to 0 ppm and stays there, you'll remove the salt through regular water changes.

Add the salt before the Bio-Spira. The bacteria won't care about the 0.1% salinity, but since you can't get the bacteria until Wednesday, you should deal with the toxicity issue now.

Yes, Prime and salt can be added at the same time, the effect of the electrolyte won't affect the binding of ammonia.

Don't apologize for asking questions, it's why we're all here. To ask and answer. No one is born knowing.
 
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