I have been battling my ammonia problem for about a week. I did daily water changes of 50% and added stress coat and I was still reading .25 so I got smart and tested my tap water. Sure enough my tap water is reading .25! I have well with a whole house filtration and a softener. Should I consider buying bottled water or use a product like AmQuel? I know which one is better for my pocketbook but which one would be better for my fish?
Tap Water vs Bottled
- Thread starter aryle85
- Start date
Are you saying your well water has .25 ammonia or that your tap water after being filtered and soften has .25 ppm ammonia? I am not real knowledgeable about this, but I did think that people only treated their inside water and not their outside faucets. If that is a possibility have you checked the water directly from your well? How long has your aquarium been set up?
The water that comes out of my kitchen faucet that goes into my tank reads .25 I don't know if I can test my water before it goes into the filtration system. As far as I know it goes directly from the well to the filtration system. The gentlman at my LFS claims its due to last years drought but I take everything he says with a grain of salt because he's kind of an idiot. But I've had my tank set up for almost 2 years so what he says kind of makes sense.
Thank you didn't even think of that! Unfortunately tho I tested that and not only did the ammonia test the same but it also had small amounts of nitrates. So now we are back to the original question...should I use AmQuel until my well balances out or switch to bottled water and continue to test my well water.
In theory most decent dechlorinators should remove 0.25 ppm of ammonia with their regular dosing, this is because they treat for chlorides, which are comprised of ammonia and chlorine. I use Tetra's Aquasafe version, after testing during my fish less cycle it does drop about 0.4 ppm of ammonia. It shouldn't have any negative effects on your fish, as it's standard to treat for those on city water.
Cost: it would probably be cheaper than bottled water also, the big bottle is around $7 at my local Wal-mart, and I believe treats around 250 gal. so it would be about $0.02 / gal
http://www.tetra-fish.com/~/media/U...aintenence/AquaSafe.ashx?w=285&h=285&bc=white
is what it looks like, you might give that a try. The other product you mention I am not familiar with.
Cost: it would probably be cheaper than bottled water also, the big bottle is around $7 at my local Wal-mart, and I believe treats around 250 gal. so it would be about $0.02 / gal
http://www.tetra-fish.com/~/media/U...aintenence/AquaSafe.ashx?w=285&h=285&bc=white
is what it looks like, you might give that a try. The other product you mention I am not familiar with.
YES!!!! 0ppm is great they will slowly go back up but that's just nitrogen cycle. If you are having problems with ammonia in new water or even existing water I would put a bag or two of the fluval zero-carb. I posted on your other thread to try the clearmax as well you can use both of the products together, I do and have had nothing but great results.
Sounds like you have done well thus far. I actually started my first tank in February my girlfriend calls me obsessed cause all I do is read read read and then stare at my tank and then read more lol there's a lot of very useful information out there and here on mft. Sounds stupid but YouTube is also a very good place to listen to people's opinions and experiences and after awhile you will start to see the same outcomes other folks have, good and bad and you can learn from these "3rd person" observations. I am dreading the day I run into the inevitable problems that come over time but till then all I can do is learn what I can and when the problem arises I can stop it and fix it as we'll as help someone else in the process. Let me know if you can find those fluval bags and if they helped your situation a bit *celebrate