Another Water Chemistry question

RTR said:
What on earth are "ammonia buffers"?
Click to expand...
A buffer is a solution that can keep its relative acidity or alkalinity constant, i.e., keep its pH constant, despite the addition of strong acids or strong bases. Buffer solutions are frequently solutions that contain either a weak acid and one of its salts or a weak base and one of its salts. Many acid-base reactions take place in living organisms. However, for organisms to perform certain vital functions, the body fluids associated with these functions must maintain a constant pH. For example, blood must maintain a pH of close to 7.4 in order to carry oxygen from the lungs to cells; blood is therefore a powerful buffer.

Ammonia is alkaline.

Hope that answers your question. But like I said, it's just an hypothesis.

SB
 
two suggestions

1) have you tested the tap water after dechlorinating it for ammonia

2)it may be worth taking your water for testing to your local lfs see if their results are the same as yours

are you still adding ammonia to the tank and still only getting 1ppm with no nitrites
 
sorry just read thread again and saw the tap reading

only suggestion is get your lfs to test and see how that is

do you have access to any tanks that are cycled pinch some filter media if you can

maybe worth asking your lfs for some gravel or filter squeezings to introduce some established nitrites

see if that might help your cycle get kickstarted

good luck

:idea2: or try getting hold of some biospira and save yourself the problems related to cycling with or without fish ;)
 
Last edited:
Sponge - I do know what buffers are, but I am unaware of the existance on any such thing as an "ammonia buffer".

Buffer sytems, other than bicarbonate/carbonate which is the natural buffering systems of FW water in the wild, are not of much use in tanks. They are not very effective or lasting, and can cause more problems than they resolve. Fish are not particularly sensitive to pH and adapt to most pH levels within normal ranges, but they are sensitive to osmolarity. Fish eggs can be much more sensitive to pH than are the fish themselves.
 
Mike, what's your pH and KH? If your pH crashes, your cycle will stall. Since your ammonia was off the charts, this was probably what stalled you to start with.

If I read your post correctly, you've got a 20g tank which had about 8ppm NH3 in it. You then changed roughly half the water (20g tank probably only holds 18-19g of water depending on how deep your substrate it), so you expect about 4ppm NH3. But instead, you got 1ppm.

I'm guessing that the 8ppm test was the day before and the 1ppm post-wc was about 24 hours later?

Anona's got it. Elodia/Egeria densa aka. anacharis is a huge nutrient sponge, that's where your missing ammonia went.

If I read the post correctly, you're trying to find out where your NH3 went, not came from, since you know that you're adding it. :P It seems that that got lost somewhere along the way...

FYI, plants and fishless cycles do not go together very well, usually a recipe for algae.
 
pH is 7.8 that is the pH of the tap water also. I have not had a pH crash, I don't have a K tester, maybe I should get one, I just got home from work and did another test ammonia 1ppm, Nitrites 0ppm and pH was 7.8. I have had the plants in there for 1 week and 1 day so far. The tank has been going for 1 week and 4 days now.

Also the odd thing is even when the ammonia was of the charts the pH stayed at 7.8.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom