Tap Water with Ammonia

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I feel like you are overstocked but I cannot "see" it. That is one to reduce your ammonia, reduce your stock. Or you can add more plants to use some of that ammonia. Anubias and Amazon swords are great. Also, if you don't like the blackwater effect of the driftwood (your tank water's yellowish), you can add activated carbon into your tank. Somewhere you can remove it so it does not leach back the adsorbed chemicals. You can remove the chemicals from the carbon and reactivate it by putting it in boiling water.
 
Naos1984 said:
I feel like you are overstocked but I cannot "see" it. That is one to reduce your ammonia, reduce your stock. Or you can add more plants to use some of that ammonia. Anubias and Amazon swords are great. Also, if you don't like the blackwater effect of the driftwood (your tank water's yellowish), you can add activated carbon into your tank. Somewhere you can remove it so it does not leach back the adsorbed chemicals. You can remove the chemicals from the carbon and reactivate it by putting it in boiling water.
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Thanks for the input. I am going to contact the LFS today about donating my 3 Tandanus. They will outgrow the tank, and one at 30cm means its probably time to start looking now.
I guess I suspected I could be overstocked, but when you can't see many of the fish most of the time, its easy to forget exactly how many are in there.
I think I will also donate or trade in the bumblebee cats.

I only just found out about plants eating ammonia and nitrate.
Any tips on plants. The reason why they are floating is I can never keep them in the gravel. Either fish are digging them up, but other times they just slowly start to rise out of the gravel.

Do I need more substrate to hold the plants?
 
beebop said:
I only just found out about plants eating ammonia and nitrate.
Any tips on plants. The reason why they are floating is I can never keep them in the gravel. Either fish are digging them up, but other times they just slowly start to rise out of the gravel.

Do I need more substrate to hold the plants?
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The anubias can be tied to driftwood. Do you know those nylon fishing lines? Get a green one and use that to tie the rhizomes to the driftwood. The roots will eventually attach to the driftwood. Do NOT bury the rhizome (the stem that creeps parallel to the ground) into the substrate. It will die. Amazon swords need to be buried into the substrate as they are root feeders. You will need at least 3" of depth to secure them easily. 2" will do but it will take some time for the roots to anchor the plant. You can also use Java ferns and attach them to driftwood or rock the same way as anubias. The plants will use the excess bioload (nitrates, ammonia) as their fertilizer and hence improve water quality. The loaches will occassionally nibble on the fresh roots but all of these plants are robust and bitter so they should survive. There are more plants you can find here. Just be sure that they grow fater than your fish can eat them. Plantfinder will also give you other choices but some plats will need other equipment so you may opt against them.
 
beebop said:
This has probably been posted many times before, but I am struggling to find an answer.

What does everyone use or add to the water if their tap water has ammonia in it?
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I too recently found my tap water to contain ammonia:

http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/f...Well-whaddya-know&highlight=well+whaddya+know

although I think it's a false positive on the API tests. I use API tap water conditioner which also claims to remove chlorine, chloramines etc and haven't had any issues although when that bottle runs out I want to try prime. People on here rave about it.

As you can see on the link above I did tests on my three tanks and tap water and only tested positive on the tap so obviously the biofilter or api is dealing with whatever is in it.
 
It's called chloramines. Ammonia and chlorine together are more stable and last longer in tap water than just chlorine, so some cities use it now. Any water conditioner that treats "chloramines" converts the ammonia to ammonium (essentially non toxic) until your bio filter eventually converts it to nitrate. You will still register ammonia on your test kit until this happens.


Sent from my iPhone using MonsterAquariaNetwork app
 
aclockworkorange said:
It's called chloramines. Ammonia and chlorine together are more stable and last longer in tap water than just chlorine, so some cities use it now. Any water conditioner that treats "chloramines" converts the ammonia to ammonium (essentially non toxic) until your bio filter eventually converts it to nitrate. You will still register ammonia on your test kit until this happens.


Sent from my iPhone using MonsterAquariaNetwork app
Click to expand...

^^

What he said. And it is the biofilter that takes out the ammonium I guess and not the tap water conditioner. I guess it's like ammo-lock.. still test positive for ammonia but it's relatively inert for the fish.
 
Here is the least expensive way to deal with ammonia straight from the tap. Be sure to run the water through slow so that it spends as much time on the carbon as possible.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Camco-Water-Filter-with-Hose/14504321
 
Thanks for all the input guys. I am currently using Stability and Prime when doing water changes.

Turns out the situation is worse than I thought. The cause of the problem is getting incorrect readings on my Nitrate test results (my fault - didn't realise you had to shake the second bottle for 30 seconds before putting the 10 drops in).
So the test result is very red. I am now doing my 4th water change since Sunday. I have also removed 10 fish from the tank and added about 10 bunches of plants. The store also sold me some product to put in the filter which helps remove Phosphates and Nitrates.

Which brings me to another question. I had to take all driftwood out of the tank to catch the fish. When fish are stressed, such as when taking out their hiding spots and stress from someone trying to catch other fish... do they produce more waste?
 
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