Holy Crap - My water has ammonia in it?!

[Jeff]

So many of you may be familiar with this thread I started (here) where I lost about 20 fish in roughly a two week period. The good news is that in the past few days, I haven't lost anymore fish (only down to eight left).

However, I have been closely monitoring my ammonia/nitrates/nitrites, and I've noticed that my ammonia has been measuring 0.25 lately. The testing kit (API Master Kit) shows a light green color when I shake up the test tube. I assumed that perhaps the ammonia was showing up because of the recent large water change, which perhaps disrupted my systems cycle and interrupted the bacteria's natural process for removing the ammonia from the system.

So over the past week, every day, I've only added about 5-10 new gallons of water to the system. I figured that by slowly adding these low amounts, I would possibly DILUTE the ammonia without damaging the bacteria in the system. However, I was surprised to see that the ammonia is still reading 0.25 or so (light green color) despite the extra 20-30 gallons of new water I've added these past few days.

So I decided to try an experiment. I just did an ammonia test on my water (which I poured into a bucket from the tap, and let it sit outside for 24 hours). That water is coming back with the same amount of ammonia in it (0.25m or a light green color on the scale)! So either I have trace amounts of ammonia in my water, or my test kit isn't accurate (the expiration date is still a year away).

So bottom line: I've been adding water all this time, hoping that it would remove the ammonia I am seeing, and I may have been adding more ammonia to the system!

I did a google search and I do see others who have mentioned finding ammonia in their tap water.......have any of you noticed anything like that before? I always knew about chlorine and chloramine, but never in a million years would I think that it would register as having ammonia in there!

I guess there isn't much I can do except only add a little at a time (which I've been doing), and making sure I treat it with the chlorine/chloramine removal as usual.

[David - WI]

Chloramine is formed by adding ammonia to chlorinated water.

"As the water leaves the treatment plant, ammonia is added to change the free chlorine to chloramine. This is a very stable form of chlorine disinfectant that maintains the residual protection in the distribution system."
http://city.milwaukee.gov/water/cust...alityandhealth

[dead_sled]

Chloramine is formed by adding ammonia to chlorinated water.

"As the water leaves the treatment plant, ammonia is added to change the free chlorine to chloramine. This is a very stable form of chlorine disinfectant that maintains the residual protection in the distribution system."
http://city.milwaukee.gov/water/cust...alityandhealth

Those chloramines will get you every time.
Vitamin c time?

[urbanfarmer]

Vitamin c time?

Yes.

[Aloha Don]

cant trust food we buy and cant trust water we drink....

[Jeff]

Forgive me because this is something I should know......but I've never added Vitamin C to the tank. When I think Vitamin C, I think of Flintstone Vitamins that kids used to take! Where do I get the kind of Vitamin C to add to the tank? Is it sold as a powder in a local super market? I'm looking for the easiest and simplest way of obtaining it.

Also, what proportions do you add? I hear that it can lower pH as well (my pH is probably around 7.6 right now).

[JCO]

Read these threads for info on Vit "C"

Pond Water