Ammonia in tap water

[TonyRs5]

My tank is about 2 months old and slowly cycling as it was a transition from 55 to 125 using old media etc.  My nitrates were 80 so I did a 50% water change two weeks ago and 30% last week.  I have been moderately successful with nitrates down to 30 to 40 and continually making progress, however, I noticed .25 ammonia which I have not been able to get rid of and I use prime when I do my water changes, not that it will remove it, however, just as fyi.  I tested my tap water immediately out of the tap and also overnight and both were a strong .25, I am not sure at this point how concerned I should be and/or what I can do to alleviate the problem.  I am of the mindset that it needs to be 0 so it is definitely bothering me.  If you have run into this please share your thoughts.  Thanks.

[Dwayne Brown]

@TonyRs5That is .25 mg/l or ppm correct? If so it's not catastrophic but definitely not good for long term health. I think that if you boil your water it should remove some of the ammonia, a more expensive alternative would be an R/O unit. From what I know ammonia is pretty hard to get out of tap water, some cities will add it to help with the water treatment process so its pretty dissolved into the water at that point. Hope this helps. 

[HH Morant]

I had 0.5 ppm ammonia in my tap water for a while. The filtration on my tank removed it within 24 hours. If your filtration is not processing 0.25 ppm extra ammonia within 24 hours or less, you may need to improve your filtration.

The 0,25 ammonia in your tap water is 0.125 ppm ammonia in your tank after a 50% water change (assuming the tank had zero detectible ammonia before the change). Your filter should be able to handle that easily.

I gradually replaced the biological media that came with my canister filters with 30 ppi foam (ppi is "pores per inch"), which is much better than any non-foam filter media. See aquariumscience.org articles on filtration and filter media. The 30 ppi foam boosted the performance of my canisters and gave me clearer water.

If you replace your filter media, it should be done gradually. I changed about 25% of mine each month or so. In my canisters, I put the new filter media last in the flow-path of the water, so that beneficial bacteria from the aged media could more easily seed the new filter media.

 

 

Edited March 15, 2022 by HH Morant

[Odd Duck]

If you have chloramines in your water, then it can show up as low level ammonia on the drop test.  Your filter should still take it out within 24 hours or less, as @HH Morantmentioned.

The pic below is the chart published by the aquariumscience.org guy (mentioned by @HH Morant) on available surface area for bacteria for different media.  There is certainly some skepticism in regard to some of his articles, but this seems pretty legit and matches information from published studies I’ve found elsewhere.

 

[TonyRs5]

Thanks for the replies, I will continue to monitor and in the near future take a look at swapping some of my media, I have and fx-6 and for a few reasons if I had to to it over again I would probably have done on or two HOB as the fx-6 is a hassle to work on..lol.