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API water test kits and ammonium


Ghost_Council
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Hello,

I am testing my water and I was wondering if ammonium being present in my water would contribute to the readings of the ammonia test in the API water parameter testing kit?

My tank is fully cycled (tank has been set up for probably 2 or 3 months at this point) and I am working on getting it heavily planted. I would say that roughly a third of the canopy is covered in water lettuce and frogbit, About half or a bit more of the floor is covered in amz sword, moneywort, val, and dwarf sag.

I have small tetras that I am feeding regularly to get them grown out. I know that the amount of food is the likely culprit for my increased ammonia levels. I am just wondering if the plant life is converting ammonia into ammonium in a way that is throwing my test readings off?

date pH Ammonia Nitrites Nitrates temp Ferts?
09/21 6.4 2.0 ppm .25 ppm 5.0 ppm 74 F dosed 09/20/21
09/22 6.4 3.0 ppm .25 ppm 0 ppm 74 F dosed 09/20/21

 

 

bonus question if anyone cares to venture a guess/soluition:

I recently started dosing with CO2 and my pH use to sit at around 6.9 to 7.0, its now sitting around 6.4; while i welcome my drop in pH i dont want it to bottom out on me while I am dosing the plants. The tank has tetra in it and they dont seem to mind. My kuhli loach is a bit of a recluse so i dont know how he/she feels about the drop. I am wondering if i should add some bone rock to the tank to try and organically bring the pH back up while still dosing CO2 for the plants. For reference my drop checker is still showing blue/green (i.e. still not sufficient levels for the amount being consumed by the plants in the tank)

 

As always thank yall for lookin.

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On 9/22/2021 at 6:41 AM, Ghost_Council said:

Hello,

I am testing my water and I was wondering if ammonium being present in my water would contribute to the readings of the ammonia test in the API water parameter testing kit?

My tank is fully cycled (tank has been set up for probably 2 or 3 months at this point) and I am working on getting it heavily planted. I would say that roughly a third of the canopy is covered in water lettuce and frogbit, About half or a bit more of the floor is covered in amz sword, moneywort, val, and dwarf sag.

I have small tetras that I am feeding regularly to get them grown out. I know that the amount of food is the likely culprit for my increased ammonia levels. I am just wondering if the plant life is converting ammonia into ammonium in a way that is throwing my test readings off?

Ive seen ammonia be present in the water when the water treatment plant of the area used chlorine and ammonia to make chloramine to treat the water. The way I was able to "correct" it was by tripping the dose on my conditioner. The bottle explicitly said to on the directions. 

With ammonium, its dependent on the ph levels of the water. 

image.png.66820edf92855f861258ef439a59b16b.png

I would say that your ammonium problem is a result of your CO2 dropping the ph relatively fast. The first thing I would do would to stop the CO2 and ferts and fully complete the cycle. Personally I like a "fish in" cycle because thats always how ive done it, but you could remove the tetra and kulfi loach because where I t stands right now, 3.0 ammonia is already pretty bad for the fish. If you choose to keep the fish in the tank, do some water changes to lower the ammonia levels temporarily (and or add some Prime), then add some beneficial bacteria to help the cycle finish out. Then add the fish back to slowly adjust the bio load. And if everything runs smoothly, start dosing ferts again, check everything is alright, then I would start doing CO2 again. 

 

Summary:

Your CO2 probably caused your ph to crash pretty fast, causing the ammonia in the tank to convert to ammonium. Solution: Stop CO2 and ferts, remove fish, and complete the cycle before adding them back. Then start CO2 and ferts in the future. 

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On 9/22/2021 at 12:41 PM, Keeg said:

Ive seen ammonia be present in the water when the water treatment plant of the area used chlorine and ammonia to make chloramine to treat the water. The way I was able to "correct" it was by tripping the dose on my conditioner. The bottle explicitly said to on the directions. 

With ammonium, its dependent on the ph levels of the water. 

image.png.66820edf92855f861258ef439a59b16b.png

I would say that your ammonium problem is a result of your CO2 dropping the ph relatively fast. The first thing I would do would to stop the CO2 and ferts and fully complete the cycle. Personally I like a "fish in" cycle because thats always how ive done it, but you could remove the tetra and kulfi loach because where I t stands right now, 3.0 ammonia is already pretty bad for the fish. If you choose to keep the fish in the tank, do some water changes to lower the ammonia levels temporarily (and or add some Prime), then add some beneficial bacteria to help the cycle finish out. Then add the fish back to slowly adjust the bio load. And if everything runs smoothly, start dosing ferts again, check everything is alright, then I would start doing CO2 again. 

 

Summary:

Your CO2 probably caused your ph to crash pretty fast, causing the ammonia in the tank to convert to ammonium. Solution: Stop CO2 and ferts, remove fish, and complete the cycle before adding them back. Then start CO2 and ferts in the future. 

awesome thank you for the in-depth analysis of the situation. I am going to leave them in and cut CO2 until my levels drop back down, as is, they are not gulping at the surface or anything like that, i want to get to homeostasis with all the elements introduced, I feel like id be more likely to kill everything in the tank via moving it around and disturbing their natural order of things tbh. I was just to ham-fisted with the CO2 once i got it hooked up. Cool new toys and all that...

In your opinion, should i taper the CO2 off slowly? or just cut it out all together for the time being while i let the N cycle complete itself? I dont want to jerk the fish back and forth between diff pH / NH3-4

ty

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On 9/22/2021 at 10:50 AM, Ghost_Council said:

awesome thank you for the in-depth analysis of the situation. I am going to leave them in and cut CO2 until my levels drop back down, as is, they are not gulping at the surface or anything like that, i want to get to homeostasis with all the elements introduced, I feel like id be more likely to kill everything in the tank via moving it around and disturbing their natural order of things tbh. I was just to ham-fisted with the CO2 once i got it hooked up. Cool new toys and all that...

In your opinion, should i taper the CO2 off slowly? or just cut it out all together for the time being while i let the N cycle complete itself? I dont want to jerk the fish back and forth between diff pH / NH3-4

ty

I dont have very much experience with CO2, I feel like cutting it off quickly won't do anything to the fish. but if you're worried, I would tamper it slowly. 

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On 9/22/2021 at 5:56 PM, Guppysnail said:

I don’t know squat about co2 I never used it. I do know fry food and small fish very well. Fry food smaller food jacks water up QUICK. I explained it to @GameCzar and they went through it first hand. It is so fine particle it breaks down very quick and gets in gravel due to a large portion being uneaten because it’s so fine. 

Absolutely.  With the feeding schedule we had to start changing water twice daily.   Didn't have any problems after that. 

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