Water conditioning -need help

[johnnymillenium]

Hi. I've got a 2.5 gal tank and have been testing the water before and after I condition the water. My tap water seems to have a relatively high ammonia level about 0.50 ppm untreated and after I've used water treatment, mainly topfin betta water conditioner, it is .25 ppm. Am I testing it wrong? I follow the instructions on both the conditioner and test kit. Should I use more conditioner? Should I buy a different brand? I have no idea what to do. I tryed filtering the water with the Pur water filter. It seemed to have helped at first but now its not reading any differently (first time was .0 then a couple of days later it was .25 -.50) Should I try using purchased filtered water? please help. I feel so bad that my betta has to be living in ammonia but I have no idea what to do, all of my water conditioners are like this, never fully getting rid of the ammonia.

[Sea Dragon]

Seachem Prime conditioner removes ammonia and chloramines as well as plain old chlorine. I suggest using that since "betta conditioner" costs way more in the long run and I don't know if that particular brand detoxifies chloramine and ammonia.

Ammonia evaporates faster than water so you can always leave your water to stand after conditioning. Im not sure how effective this is though.

[johnnymillenium]

Thank you! this stuff sounds awesome, i'll buy some right away. I don't think they've got it at my local pet store (my petsmart sucks) so i'll have to buy it online. good thing i've got free two day shipping on amazon ^.^ YAY!

[logisticsguy]

Agree with Sea Dragon. 2 drops per gallon of water and your good to go.

[johnnymillenium]

oh wow, then my 250ml bottle will last a LONG time. sweet! thank you guys again! I would just die if something happened to my johnny boomboom

[shellieca]

Prime does NOT remove ammonia, it will detoxify it for approx. 24 hrs which in a tank that is filtered & cycled gives the BB time to do its job.

[Racoon293]

What if the tanks not filtered or cycled? Can you add the Prime everyday?

[johnnymillenium]

ooo yea I forgot to mention that my tank isn't cycled, because its only 2.5. I'm trying to do this thing where I change the water 100% to clean water and test the water everyday until ammonia shows up, then change the water. that way I will know how many days it can go before ammonia will show up and i can change it a day before the expected showing up of ammonia. Right now I've been changing it every 5 days. I used to do partial water changes but it didn't seem to make a difference as far as parameters went. but its never really a 100% water change because the water i take him out in gets put back into the water after i've slowly added the brought to temp clean water into it to acclimate him. its really not much though about 1 cup. I hope this is okay to do still using the prime...

[pittipuppylove]

I have a similar issue with my water (~20ppm nitrates from the tap). What I was recommended was to use Prime to detoxify the new water and to use a bunch of fast growing live plants. Theory is that the Prime keeps the water safe long enough for the plants to take care of the ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates. This's worked really well for me and my fish really enjoy the live plants
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[johnnymillenium]

interesting. I will have to read up on live plants. I have no idea what using those entail or what I will have to do to maintain those as well. Can I still change the water 100% with live plants, or will i not need to? also, how will i get the poop out of the tank if I've got plants in there that cannot be removed like the fake ones?