ammonia??

[Pizzapro83]

I HAVE 120GALLON TANK AND A 5O GALLON LOOK DOWN FRAG TANK ALL TIED INTO ONE. I CHANGE 30 GALLONS EVERY TWO WEEKS. i TESTED MY AMMONIA AND I THINK I HAVE A SMALL AMOUNT. HOW DO YOU GET AMMONIA? I TAKE VERY GOOD CARE OF MY TANK. IS THERE ANYTHING TO DO TO PREVENT THIS FROM HAPPEN AGAIN. AND AS OF TODAY SHOUL I DO A WATER CHANGE? COULD MY TEST KIT BE WRONG. WHOULD A coil denitrator HELP? THANKS FOR ANY INPUT

 

[gilmour01]

if its an established tank thats doing well, i would lean more toward a faulty test kit.

 

[Pizzapro83]

It has been up for a year with no problems. I was having a alk problem and lost some color on a couple corals but thats it. How do you get ammonia

 

[dmjordan]

did you have anything die recently or have you added new fish or live rock? how old is the tank.

 

[roshi719]

ammonia comes from a few sources: Fish and coral waste ( only in a new system void of any bacteria), decomposing organic matter (ie food sitting on bottom), or in rare cases where it is used to stabilize chlorine in tap water it can com in through source water. So my first question would be do you have an RO system, and if so when was the last time you changed the filters in it?

 

[Pizzapro83]

i DO HAVE RO THE TDS ARE .02 AND I CHANGED THEM FIVE MONTHS AGO. I WAS JUST ABOUT TO CHANGE THEM AGAIN. WHAT CAN I DO TO LOWER THE AMMONIA ? AND WHAT IS A GOOD TEST KIT FOR AMMONIA?

 

[roshi719]

Have you tried testing your ro for ammonia? API is what I use for an ammonia test kit. I know Kankakee water comes out of the tap with ammonia off the charts. I have to use a carbon filter that is designed to remove chloramines (Municipal water sources have this as a stabilized form of chlorine, it shows up on tests as ammonia), and I still change it out once a month just to be on the safe side.

 

[Pizzapro83]

Where can i find a carbon filter? Can i just test my ro water same way as i check my tank

 

[AZDesertRat]

Carbon filters don't remove ammonia even so called chloramine filters. Its good DI resin that removes the ammonia portion of chloramines and any good carbon block will remove the chlorien portion. At normal residual disinfectant levels of 2 mg/L or less chloramine filters are not worth the money especially if they are the granular type which should be foillowed up with either another prefilter or a carbon block to trap the dust of fines when the carbon breaks down. Also granular products have a very short useful life, often as little as 300 total gallons, thats only 60 gallons of RO/DI and 240 gallons of waste at the normal 4:1 waste ratio. Use a single Matrikx+1 0.6 micron Chlorien Guzzler and you will be much better off both in perfromance and lifespan.
If you want to spend money on better filtration spend it on improved DI products like SilicaBuster or MaxCap resins from Spectrapure. More bang for the buck.