Wate a LFS told me, Is It true.

[dmed]

That's ..kinda.. what I was getting at.

Excuse me if you know all this already and you just have ammonia in your tap water, in which case I feel very sorry for you, along with your family, your dogs/cats, and your houseplants.

Chloramine is a combination of ammonia and chlorine. When you add water conditioner to tap water containing chloramine, the conditioner breaks the bond between them and dechorinates the water (changes chlorine to chloride), leaving behind the ammonia. However, if the conditioner is also designed for chloramine (like Prime or Amquel), it converts the ammonia from free ammonia (NH3) to ionized ammonia (NH4+) which is harmless to the fish and eventually removed by the biofilter.

Problem is, this reaction is pH-dependent. Almost ALL ammonia test kits begin by raising the pH of the tested water to a level of alkalinity that is incompatible with life (pH > 12) which causese the ionized ammonia to revert to free ammonia and then it shows up as free ammonia in your water. This is why I ALWAYS recommend the Seachem Ammonia Multi-test kit as it is the only kit I'm aware of that tests free ammonia at the pH level of your tank water.

Toxicity of ammonia is greatly affected by both temperature and pH, so any real discussion of ammonia should include parameters for both.

I know you have already bought the R/O system and that is the basis of your question, but now other people who may be from your area seem to be alarmed, so maybe we'd better get to the bottom of this problem......

 

[Nic]

That's ..kinda.. what I was getting at.

Excuse me if you know all this already and you just have ammonia in your tap water, in which case I feel very sorry for you, along with your family, your dogs/cats, and your houseplants.

Chloramine is a combination of ammonia and chlorine. When you add water conditioner to tap water containing chloramine, the conditioner breaks the bond between them and dechorinates the water (changes chlorine to chloride), leaving behind the ammonia. However, if the conditioner is also designed for chloramine (like Prime or Amquel), it converts the ammonia from free ammonia (NH3) to ionized ammonia (NH4+) which is harmless to the fish and eventually removed by the biofilter.

Problem is, this reaction is pH-dependent. Almost ALL ammonia test kits begin by raising the pH of the tested water to a level of alkalinity that is incompatible with life (pH > 12) which causese the ionized ammonia to revert to free ammonia and then it shows up as free ammonia in your water. This is why I ALWAYS recommend the Seachem Ammonia Multi-test kit as it is the only kit I'm aware of that tests free ammonia at the pH level of your tank water.

Toxicity of ammonia is greatly affected by both temperature and pH, so any real discussion of ammonia should include parameters for both.

I know you have already bought the R/O system and that is the basis of your question, but now other people who may be from your area seem to be alarmed, so maybe we'd better get to the bottom of this problem......

thanks for the info.... i was unaware of how the test kits work... i do keep one on hand but i never use it... but i will replace it with the seachem one.... Thank you again for that info... i always questioned how accurate they were... makes me really wonder now if they buffer the water....

 

[Mystus Redtail]

thanks for the info.... i was unaware of how the test kits work... i do keep one on hand but i never use it... but i will replace it with the seachem one.... Thank you again for that info... i always questioned how accurate they were... makes me really wonder now if they buffer the water....

Thank you dmed, that does help a lot.

 

[dmed]

Your tap water definitely contains chloramine. Here is a link to your city's Water Quality Report for 2007 (2008 being not yet available): http://www.kcmo.org/water/ccr.pdf

In 2007, water in Kansas City contained an average of 2.25 ppm chlorine (as chloramine) and 0.260 ppm ammonia. Ammonia is about 31% of a chloramine molecule (with chlorine being the other 69%), so the chloramine would account for the ammonia in the samples.

WATER QUALITY TABLE IS ON PAGE 4 OF PDF - you have pretty good and safe drinking water compared to a lot of municipalities.

 

[nfored]

The problem with prime and almost all other chems, is they only detoxify the ammonia. Since the ammonia is still there it gets converted into nitrite, and then I have a nitrite problem, by the time the ammonia is converted to nitrite the prime has dissipated. I have been about to double dose over a two day time frame with amquel+ and get 0ppm ammonia from the tap water.

I am having the worse time, i have been to 4 LFS and petdumb (petsmart) and can't find any type of R/o Treatment, other then what I said in the post. I contacted seachem and they told me to use equilibrium. I finally found a place that has R/O right, but its a half hour drive. I plan on using this R/O right to add the minerals and use the [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Neutral Regulator to keep pH at 7.

As for my pH and Temp compared to ammonia, my pH is very low right now 6.0 and temp is 78, this is due to using 50/50 R/O and tap, basiclly killing my buffering; combined with the High nitrate problem.

With a pH of 6.0 the fish can live with .50 ammonia if they have to as the toxicity is low at this pH.

The reason behind this thread and a couple others, was that I need to setup a drip system to combat High Nitrate, since nitrate is acidic it will lower my pH. Also I am tired of going through a cycle every time I change water, so I adopted the US Governments view of problem solving "throw some money, I don't have at it"
[/FONT]

 

[nfored]

Neutral Regulator does not contain all the trace elements, mostly just phosphate salts. I would find a product manufactured specifically as an R/O additive.

1 ppm is a LOT of ammonia. What test kit are you using? Are you conditioning the tap water before testing, or testing straight from the tap? Are you testing free or total ammonia? Just curious.

I have tried it all. test right out of the facet, tested after adding conditioner, and test after amquel+. Amquel+ gets my vote all day long as it cut the ammonia in half. I am using API liquid, I have bought two set of them, and both return the same results

 

[dmed]

The problem with prime and almost all other chems, is they only detoxify the ammonia. Since the ammonia is still there it gets converted into nitrite, and then I have a nitrite problem, by the time the ammonia is converted to nitrite the prime has dissipated. I have been about to double dose over a two day time frame with amquel+ and get 0ppm ammonia from the tap water.

I am having the worse time, i have been to 4 LFS and petdumb (petsmart) and can't find any type of R/o Treatment, other then what I said in the post. I contacted seachem and they told me to use equilibrium. I finally found a place that has R/O right, but its a half hour drive. I plan on using this R/O right to add the minerals and use the [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Neutral Regulator to keep pH at 7.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]As for my pH and Temp compared to ammonia, my pH is very low right now 6.0 and temp is 78, this is due to using 50/50 R/O and tap, basiclly killing my buffering; combined with the High nitrate problem. [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]With a pH of 6.0 the fish can live with .50 ammonia if they have to as the toxicity is low at this pH.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The reason behind this thread and a couple others, was that I need to setup a drip system to combat High Nitrate, since nitrate is acidic it will lower my pH. Also I am tired of going through a cycle every time I change water, so I adopted the US Governments view of problem solving "throw some money, I don't have at it"[/FONT]

Is the problem nitrIte or nitrAte as you stated both in your post? Nitrite is from inadequate biofilter. Nitrate is in your water as runoff from organic farming compounds (go back to your KC water quality report to see this).

Levels of free ammonia in a pH around 6 should be very low, especially if you also keep the temp down. Pick up the Seachem Ammonia Multi-test kit when you get the R/O additive to check free ammonia levels.

 

[nfored]

Nitrite is 0 the problem is with nitrate, I just noticed I typed it wrong. I only mentioned nitrite to show that nutralizing ammonia with prime is not enough.

Sorry again I was tired, the problem is NitrAte. I just got R/O Right today and omg you have to use a lot of it, 40ml per 10 gallons, at that rate ill have to buy it by the gallon.

I will order the seachem test kit tonight, although my r/o water has 0 ammonia? Thanks for all your help