Ammonia in my tap water?

[BarnacleBoy]

So I just finished cycling my tank. Got my ammonia and nitrite both down to 0ppm. I was about to do a water change before I added fish... but I figured I'd test the tap water just for the hell of it. And theres at least 1ppm of ammonia in my tap water...... is this normal? I ran the test a few times and even compared it to my tank water. I live in west palm beach florida and my apartment uses city water. Here's a picture of my tank water on the left and my tap water on the right. I'm assuming I shouldn't do a water change with this water...

 

[tarheel96]

You have chloramine instead of chlorine only. Chloramine is made when ammonia is added to chlorine. The water treatment plant does this because the disinfectant (chloramine) is more cost effective to use than chlorine.

Prime or Safe detoxifies the ammonia for 24-48 hours. Your nitrifying bacteria still consume it in this form so it makes no difference to them.

My water contains 1 ppm chloramine just like that. Over 1/3 of the US ... probably closer to half have chloramine in their water.

Chloramine = ammonia + chlorine
NH2Cl

 

[BarnacleBoy]

You have chloramine instead of chlorine only. Chloramine is made when ammonia is added to chlorine. The water treatment plant does this because the disinfectant (chloramine) is more cost effective to use than chlorine.

Prime or Safe detoxifies the ammonia for 24-48 hours. Your nitrifying bacteria still consume it in this form so it makes no difference to them.

My water contains 1 ppm chloramine just like that. Over 1/3 of the US ... probably closer to half have chloramine in their water.

Chloramine = ammonia + chlorine
NH2Cl

Thanks for your help. After doing a little more research I read prime would neutralize it but I was worried my bacteria wouldnt convert it in that state.

 

[squint]

Thanks for your help. After doing a little more research I read prime would neutralize it but I was worried my bacteria wouldnt convert it in that state.

The claim is that the bacteria can still utilize it but anybody can print anything on the back of a bottle or on a website these days.

 

[tarheel96]

The claim is that the bacteria can still utilize it but anybody can print anything on the back of a bottle or on a website these days.

My experience tells me that the bacteria can still utilize it. If it couldn't, what would happen to that 1 ppm ammonia (or NH2 in this case)?

As stated above, my tap water also reads ~1 ppm ammonia because of chloramines. On my JD tank, I perform fin-level water changes using that water strait from the tap conditioned with Safe. At that time, the tank water will always read ~1 ppm ammonia. The next day, it will read 0 ppm ammonia.

The nitrifying bacteria can oxidize ammonium (NH4) .. ammonia (NH3). Why not NH2? What does Prime/Safe do to NH2 after the chloramine bond has been broken which would prevent it from being utilized by the nitrifying bacteria?

Hopfully RD. and others can weigh in on this topic.

 

[duanes]

Its not that chloramine is only cost effective.
Chloramine at a lower dose holds a longer disinfection residual, so is more effective in large distribution systems.
Chloramine when mixed with organic compounds, also produces less disinfection by products than chlorine alone, those disinfection by-products (trihalomethes), can be carcinogenic.
To produce chloramine 1 part ammonia is mixed with 4 to 5 parts chlorine.
There have been studies finding chloramine is also effective in controlling legionella in water fed cooling systems, because of its better residual.

 

[RD.]

Duane's comment was spot on.

To add to that:

The claim is that the bacteria can still utilize it but anybody can print anything on the back of a bottle or on a website these days.

Not only can it utilize it, by nothing more than doing frequent massive water changes with chloramine treated tap water, and using Prime I grew my bio bacteria to a far greater capacity than what was being delivered by the fish/food in my tank. It was an experiment that I did on purpose many years ago, while I was preparing for some new fish to go into a holding tank. My tank went from a few small juvies, to I think approx. 15 adults, without a single hiccup. Since then I have repeated this a number of times, with much larger fish. No spike in ammonia or nitrites.