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If there is ammonia in my tap water?

1K views 18 replies 5 participants last post by  Wendyjo 
#1 ·
It was just brought to my attention that there could be ammonia in fresh tap water! If there is, is there any special precautions that I need to take? Or could I just take care of my betta "normally" (meaning the normal water change schedule).
 
#2 ·
There are some water conditioners that will remove ammonia along with chlorine and etc, I dont have ammonia in my tap, but i use Aqueon conditioner and it says on the bottle that it will remove it. SO i'm sure there are others that will do the same.
 
#3 ·
Oh okay. I just looked at my bottle of prime and it says it removes ammonia. So I guess as long as you have a good water conditioner that does that, it doesn't matter if there is ammonia in your tap/source water, right?
 
#4 ·
The conditioner will turn ammonia into ammonium or something like that which is not harmful for the betta. I have ammonia in my tap water as well and even after I use the conditioner and test the water it still shows a 0.25ppm ammonia. This is because the test cannot distinguish between ammonia and ammonium. I take 0.25 as my base reading for ammonia now
 
#5 ·
Yeah but that means the conditioner makes the tap water safe, even if it has ammonia to begin with, right?
 
#6 ·
It should as long as it says it'll remove ammonia.
 
#7 ·
I heard that it neutralizes ammonia for up to 48 hours. Does that mean that any NEW ammonia produced after that will not be neutralized by the conditioner? All the neutralized ammonia doesn't come back and turn back into ammonia all of the sudden right?
 
#11 ·
Oh okay yeah that's what I was wondering...I was just worried about the tap water ammonia changing back into the harmful kind after the 48 hours...:-?
 
#12 ·
I might look into that.. hmm.. I would probably assume that it doesn't.. It wouldn't make sense to remove harmful water and replace it with water that is only harmless for 48 hours?
 
#14 ·
Ammo-Lock is not a good option, Prime is. You can dose it every 24 hours (which is how long it stays in the tank). Keep in mind though, that it will give you a false positive reading, so it will say you still have ammonia, but the Prime binds to it, as well as the nitrite, making it less harmful to the fish.
I found this here

So maybe they all only neutralize it temporarily?
 
#15 ·
Well I'm not sure about the wording. Does it mean it removes current ammonia and continues to remove new ammonia for 24hrs and then only the new ammonia produced by the fish after that can be harmful? Or does it neutralize for 24hrs and then it all turns back into the dangerous kind of ammonia?
 
#16 ·
The way it's worded, it sounds like the new water is only neutralized for 24 hours. Other replies said that they needed to figure out the source of the high ammonia, not just use the conditioner.

It probably means that you need to either cycle your tank or do frequent water changes to keep the ammonia down. The general idea in the entire thread seemed to be that water conditioner alone is not enough to get rid of the ammonia.

It doesn't seem to be a very common concern because I can't find much information on it. :roll:
 
#18 ·
No one answered and they didn't answer that question on the website. :(....someone has to know...Does the ammonia that prime bonds with stay non toxic?
 
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