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Tap or bottled water??

747 views 4 replies 5 participants last post by  Bombalurina 
#1 ·
My fish was living with my boyfriend but I just recently brought him home to my house. We'd not had much issue with ammonia so I was shocked when I checked it with the liquid test and it was about 1.5 ppm after a 25% change. We checked and the water coming directly from the tap and it was even higher.
Without many options at that moment, we purchased a few gallons of zephyrhills because it seemed a better option than the high ammonia tap water. I was hesitant about getting the bottled water because I'd heard that it isn't good.
Is that true? Should I be using bottled? or should I just use the tap water and if so is there a product I can purchase to make sure the ammonia isn't hurting him? or maybe there is a safer type of bottled water to purchase?
THANKS!
 
#2 ·
The only thing about bottle water is that it doesn't contain the minerals from tap that is needed for your fish. You can still use it, but remember he might not do as well but it should be fine for temporary.

There are a few things you can get, SeaChem's Prime Water Conditioner also neutrifies ammonia coming from your tap so what I would do is get a bucket, fill with some tap water, use Prime and check the ammonia again. Here's the site link for Prime so you can check out exactly what it does: http://www.seachem.com/Products/product_pages/Prime.html

You can also use something like this: http://www.petsmart.com/product/ind...ferralID=52a92c4b-c3dc-11e2-9389-001b2166c62d
Again I would take a pail of water and test it again before you use it in the aquarium just to make sure.

And whatever you do, don't use distilled water please! That stuff is very harmful to your fish :)

:cheers:
 
#3 ·
Did you use Prime or some other water conditioner which neutralizes ammonia? If not, that could well solve your problem.

Distilled water has no minerals so you need to add them if you use it straight or it can harm your Betta. Many aquarists use it to lower GH by mixing it half-and-half with tap water when doing partial water changes. That's what I did with no casualties. Then I decided they needed to adapt to my GH...which they did.
 
#4 ·
After prime the test will still show ammonia, prime detoxifies ammonia, it doesn't actually remove it. The purpose of using prime is to make it non toxic to your fish while your biological filtration removes the ammonia. By the time prime wears off all the ammonia should be gone.

If you are still worried you could mix half bottled and half tap water. Or you could add live plants to remove the ammonia quicker.
 
#5 ·
If you can cycle your tank, that will deal with the ammonia for you, without making you have to go through all these measures. For now, though, Prime is probably your best option. However, I have heard that it only neutralises ammonia for 48 hours. Bear in mind it can also give a false positive for the first 24 hours.
 
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