Could New Plants Increase Ammonia?

[Jennifer V]

That could be a dumb question but I've had a recent slight ammonia increase after weeks of stability at 0 and the only thing I've changed is I've added several new plants, which are the only thing in the tank right now other than a bladder snail. 

[lefty o]

i have never heard of, or seen plants raising ammonia. 

[Jennifer V]

@lefty o I figured that's not the case but just wanted to check. Maybe you can help me with what I did wrong. 

I added the new plants, which kicked up a bunch of old plant leaves and I guess swirled around the brown algae I have so I did a water change. Did that adjust the water too much and cause the ammonia? 

[lefty o]

it is possible stirring up the bottom released a small pocket of gas or something. any fish or creatures showing adverse affects?

[Jennifer V]

@lefty o I don't have anything in there except a small bladder snail, who of course is fine. I want to add some other snails and shrimp so I'm upset about the ammonia situation, although it isn't a huge increase. 

Oh! I did add some Seachem Flourish to the water. 

[JettsPapa]

As far as I know the only way plants can raise ammonia is if there are dead leaves that are breaking down.  I assume if that was the case you would have removed them.

You said "slight increase".  How much is "slight"?  It's my understanding that 0.25 ppm is within the margin of error, so unless it's higher you may not actually have elevated ammonia.

[Jennifer V]

@JettsPapa no way! I didn't know that .25 ppm was the margin of error. Mine looks like it's somewhere between that and .5 ppm but very hard to tell so maybe I'm just being dramatic. 😂

I did have quite a few dead plant leaves from a water wisteria that didn't make it so I removed all of those too.

Thank you so much! 

[gardenman]

It's possible there was fertilizer in the new plants you planted. Some places use little time released balls (like Osmocote if you're also a terrestrial gardener) in their potted plants to help them grow. If there were such pellets on the roots of the new plants and one or more got crushed while being planted, instead of slowly releasing the fertilizer they may have dumped it all at once. Ammonium Nitrate is a very common fertilizer and as you can tell by the name, it has ammonia in it. If a little pellet that was to slowly release ammonia over a three to six month period got crushed and released it all at once, that could account for your issue. (Some people put Osmocote into gel capsules to use as DIY root tabs.) Those little time release fertilizer pellets/bombs are designed to last anywhere from three to sixteen months, so they pack a lot of fertilizer into a tiny little resin coated ball. If that resin shell breaks, then much more comes out at once instead of over months. That would be my best guess as to what happened. Anything decaying in the tank was already decaying in the tank. 

[FishyThoughts]

3 hours ago, Jennifer V said:

I added the new plants, which kicked up a bunch of old plant leaves and I guess swirled around the brown algae I have so I did a water change. Did that adjust the water too much and cause the ammonia? 

There could be a number of contributing factors. Dead/dying bacteria on the plants themselves, dying leaves on plants, dying bacteria above water line during water change, anaerobic bacteria dying substrate from becoming aerobic conditions when planting, fertilizers on plants. I’m sure there’s probably many more possibilities that I didn’t think of. 
 

I don’t believe stirring up the plant leaves/brown algae should have been a big issue. Unless you had a fairly dense layer of those materials, then that might contribute. But overall I wouldn’t stress too much over an small increase since you said there was no fish. Snails in general are rather hardy and I’d guess the tank should be able to recover from the increase without any severe problems. 

[Jennifer V]

@gardenman @FishyThoughts thank you so much for the thoughtful responses. There is so much to learn and it really helps to have all of you to talk to. 

[lefty o]

1 hour ago, Jennifer V said:

@gardenman @FishyThoughts thank you so much for the thoughtful responses. There is so much to learn and it really helps to have all of you to talk to. 

the learning never ends in this hobby. even after doing this for decades, daily on this forum i read of problems, and of doing things in ways i have never seen. we're all in this together.