What would you say, if I said I have measurable Ammonia in a 1.5 year old tank?

[Whiskey]

Hello!

First the tank,..
It's a 30G tall, with a Fluval 204 (running over a year on this tank) Aquaclear 30 (running at least 6 months on this tank) and a brand new Ehiem Filter that was added a week or two ago because I got a really good deal on it.

The tank is Heavily planted, CO2 injected, lower light, but the plants are growing well and pearl. Substrate has been in the tank the whole time with no major disturbance other than occasional light vacuuming.

Fish are:
2 Cories
1 SAE
3 or so Ottos
4 Black Skirt Tetras
5 Zebra Danios

I was doing other tests,.. and decided to test Ammonia, (which I haven't done since the tank cycled over a year and a half ago), and it came back at 0.50,.. I've continued to test it over the last 3 days, and it's been between 0.5 and 0.25 consistently.

My first reaction is that the test HAS to be bad,.. I mean there's no way right?

I have 2X the recommended amount of filtration leaving out the new filter, and 4X with it, plus the plants should soak up that ammonia before the filters ever get a shot.

What do you think? Is it possible enough that I should buy another test?

Whiskey

 

[Cyclesafe]

I would doubt the reading also. But what's the point of even buying a new kit and testing? Would a positive reading make you do anything different? Save your money. If the fish are OK, don't worry.

BTW, if you use a thiosulfite-based water conditioner (like Prime etc) and have alot of chloramine in your tap, an ammonia test kit would read positive for "ammonia".

http://www.seachem.com/support/MSDS/Prime.doc.pdf

 

[nerbaneth]

I'd take your water to a LFS - if you don't have one, a store like petco and petsmart will test for you as well. It's probably an error in the test or a false positive, but it could be your tank recycling due to some kind of antibacterial cleaning product getting in there. To test the false positive - you could test your tap water with prime added and see if you read ammonia.

 

[Matt F.]

SF water has .25-.50 ppm ammonia/ammonium out of the tap. That's before chloramine breakdown.

 

[Whiskey]

I do use Prime and tap water, but were now going on a week since the last water change, in fact I did my weekly water change today. After a week, shouldn't the bacteria, and the plants have had enough time to use the Ammonia introduced by the water change? I understand that the prime makes it harmless to the fish, but won't it still be used by the tank?

I'm preparing a test with prime, and tap water now. I'll let you guys know in a few what I find.

Thanks everyone!
Whiskey

 

[Whiskey]

Tap water dosed with prime, then mixed, and immediately tested comes in at 1ish ppm Ammonia.
But would that remain in a tank? Or can that be used by the plants and bacteria?

Whiskey

 

[ShadowMac]

I think your finding for ammonia is an "artifact" and not a true reading. It may be how the test works and how prime works on chloramines. It is a false positive, IMO.

I'm with cyclesafe, if everything is okay then your observations are showing that your test is wrong. If your eyes see something and a test says you don't see it, what do you believe? If your spedometer in your car says 50 mph when you are stopped, do you forget that you are stopped and trust the spedometer? No, you say your spedometer is broken.

Fish are fine, plants are fine, then nothing to worry about.