Ammonia issues

[Bettarazzi]

I was doing water changes the other day for the fish in jars (1.5 ltr beanie boxes) and out of curiosity decdied to check the ammonia level. The water had not been changed for about 3 or maybe 4 days. I was pretty surprised to discover that ammonia was at 2ppm. Yesterday I set up some new jars and today one of the jars had an ammonia reading of 0.25 and another had a reading of 0.5! Is that wacky? Or to be expected? At this rate of deterioration I'm going to need to do daily 100% water changes if I want ammonia to stay at 0ppm. I'm wondering if there's any point adding Cycle to the jars given there's no aeration in these jars.

[windyzz]

Ammonia reading 0.25 - 0.5 is normal if u change water, When water conditioner dechlorine your water, it break the chlorine and chloromine particle and convert all to ammonia(heard this from article and i've experimenting it myself and its true), but good water conditioner like "Seachem" contain some chemical that would convert the ammonia to ammonium. To prevent this you should just age water for around 48 hour+( dont put water conditioner), then after 48 hour of aging water, most chlorine and chloromine is gone, and then you allowed to add water conditioner just incase to completely remove all the chlorine, chloromine, and other heavy metal in that water, and hopefully ammonia wont shoot up.

[Bettarazzi]

I thought most people aged water with the conditioner/dechlorinator. Just to clarify the situation here. The water in the beanie boxes was fresh tap water with double dose of Prime (Seachem) added plus some IAL extract. So what windyzz has said makes sense. Just wondering about the different effects of ageing water with and without dechlorinator. This is the first time I've really taken notice of ammonia reading in jars.

So am I right in thinking that adding Cycle isn't going to help in jars?

[Callatya]

dechloraminators will give you ammonia when the bond breaks, like Windyzz said.

I wouldn't bother with Cycle for this, I'd go with Ammolock or zeolite etc.

[Bettarazzi]

OK so if I'm willing to allow water to sit for 48 hours, and I've got some zeolite, would it be better to add dechlorinator right from the start, have a bag of zeolite in the ageing bucket so that after 48 hours the water should be ammonia and chlorine free?

What I don't quite understand is that I had some extra water, beanies and space so I filled up some beanies with water to make the next water change easier. The unoccupied beanies don't have any ammonia. Are we saying here that it's the dechlorination process that's raising the ammonia? If that's the case I'd expect both the occupied and unoccupied beanies to have ammonia. Or are you saying the zeolite has to be in the jars?

[windyzz]

Ok this what basic thing happen. fresh water from tap in aus contain chlorine and chloromine, and if you put dechlorination(water condition) straight away, what the water conditioner do is break up those chloromine and chlorine particle, and somehow it become ammonia, so if the tap water consist of high chlorine, then u'll expected to have high ammonia once u put ur water conditioner in.

So i suggest you to leave your water in other beanies for around 24 - 48 hour(48 hour + is better), this aging water process would let the chlorine and chloromine to evaporate into air( iam not sure the exact time for evaporation), so after aging the water for couple of day, it'll let the water free from those particle, so once u pour in the water conditioner after aging your water, there are no particle of chlorine to be break down by the water conditioner to become ammonia. What the water conditioner do is just to break down some few traces of those chemical "In case they not evaporate completely", and some heavy metal particle in water.

So after aging your water for couple of days, and pour in your water conditioner, iam pretty sure your water are safe from ammonia, hopefully it would read 0 ppm of ammonia.

good luck

[Bettarazzi]

OK I'm going to try out that suggestion of aging water for 2 days without water conditioner, then add water conditioner before using in jars. Might do a bit of an experiment to see if there is a noticeable difference between my old method and this one.

[Callatya]

I would be careful of just aging water that you suspect has chloramine in it, the reason most places use chloramine is that is is pretty stable and can withstand things that chlorine can't, like extreme temperatures and aging. For chlorine, no worries, but for chloramine I'd be wary. It is fairly hefty stuff, and generally used in higher concentrations than chlorine alone.

Chloramine is a mix of chlorine and ammonia, and what dechloriminators do is break the bond that binds them together, giving you the relatively unstable chlorine and a bunch of ammonia. Generally they help to get rid of the chlorine, and some of them change the ammonia to ammonium also. If you added that water to a large cycled tank as part of a partial water change, you probably wouldn't even get a detectable spike as the levels would be low overall and the bacteria would make short work of it. In a beanie baby box, you have a 100% change so you'd see that straight away.

Because of the way chloramines are constructed, I think you might have more success using the dechlor to break those bonds straight away, and then giving the separate compounds the time to break down or leave, or whatever it is that they do. Doing it the other way around may work, but you may also get a jump in ammonia when you add the dechlor, so if you go that way, check before you add it to the system.

http://www.epa.gov/safewater/disinfection/chloramine/

http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_chlorine.htm

http://www.watercorporation.com.au/_files/...r/13/wqual4.pdf

All that aside, I don't think that is your issue.

In 1.5L too, having a detectable ammonia read from a single betta is not abnormal, just undesirable and often something that goes unnoticed. If you scale it up and say, put an oscar in a small tank that gave roughly the same amount of cm3 of water for cm3 of fish, you'd expect a fairly substantial ammonia reading on day 2-3, so it is fairly similar. In that size jar, with no substrate, plants, or water additives, I'd expect a reading on day 2, and I'd expect a scarily high reading on day 6. The rate at which the ammonia would rise in that size container would make it very hard for bacteria to get a toehold long enough to overtake and start processing.

If you have them as 1.5L individual unfiltered tanks, you need to either push or pull the cycle, or change 100% daily. I'd be trying to either cycle them somewhat (so adding Cycle/Nitravec/Stability/etc and having some substrate, not washing the container in tap water to try to preserve any bacteria, and adding pre-aged water), or trying to hold back the cycle (using zeolite as substrate, adding aged dechlor water so you get lower ammonia to start with, and using something like AmQuel or Ammolock). Either way, you are probably looking at about 6-9 days before the ammonia will start to rise and you'll need to start the process over again.

I had success in 2L bottles with 1/2" gravel, small plant, 2x dose of Ammolock, and dechlorinated tap water. That would give me 6-8 days of fishy comfort, but past that, I'd get visible signs of rising ammonia and the start of that smell. Unfortunately with Ammolock, you can't get a true reading unless you have a kit that shows free ammonia only, so it was a bit of guesstimation. Do a bit of experimenting and measuring, you'll hit on the right combo for that size jar, your water and your schedule

EDIT: and just because I need to ask, what brand of dechlor do you use? ;)

[Bettarazzi]

Thanks for taking the trouble to write all that up Abbey! Hope you didn't stay up till 3am just for me. All that is making more sense now.

My plan is to set up a drip system of some kind which will help with the ammonia issues in the the long run. In the meantime you've given me some things to think about that might help. I'm feeling very guilty about doing 100% daily water changes in te middle of a nationwide drought. It would be better if the beanies could last 3-4 days. I'm going to try adding Cycle to the water and see if that helps extend water quality. And I'm considering how to add gravel without cause problems with it scratching the beanies. I suppose putting them in a cloth bag or net could be a solution but the thought of making 20 little bags of gravel isn't filling me with joy at the moment.

[Callatya]

I know what you mean about the WCs, I feel pretty lousy too, and worse when it is SW because I can't even put that on the garden

It doesn't have to be gravel, it just needs to be some sort of media for the bacteria to grow on. I think some people were using those green plastic scouring pads with good success. They might scratch, but if you cut them small enough, perhaps not? Maybe you could even just use them as substrate? You just need something with a porous or pitted surface (more space for bacteria housing estates ) or with lots of surface area like filterwool etc. Filter wool batting is probably a bit dangerous, but maybe the black foam stuff? Or just non-treated foam chips? Probably have to chip the good foam yourself.

There is bound to be a way! :thumbs:

[Bettarazzi]

To get a bacteria cycle going in a beanie box, will I need to get some aeration in there? Or do you think there is sufficient dissolved oxygen to feed keep aerobic bacteria alive? Or are we just talking about anaerobic bacteria in this instance?

[Bettarazzi]

Did a 100% water change with the addition of Cycle on Friday night and this morning ammonia is 0.25ppm. Slightly better than before but that could also be because the fish have only had one feed since then. I have now moved as many as I can into filtered tanks. There are 7 remaining fish in beanie boxes. I've added pieces of ammonia absorbing sponge (made by HBH) rather than do another water change. I'll test the water again later today.