tap water has ammonia

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Momo

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so 2 weeks into my QT fro ich i was wondering why my water changes were not helping with the ammonia level thought i'd test the ro water get a reading of 1ppm same for straight from tap....:( never noticed with the display tank because the bacteria was just dealing with it i guess.

so what do i do for water changes for the qt tank? bottled water? gonna be expensive need to do like 100l every couple of days. any other ideas?
 
How old is the unit and when last did you do maintenance to it? Have you tested the TDS of the water?
What test kits are you using?
 
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about 4 months old now, flush for 5min before use. don't have a tds meter so not sure. don't see how an ro unit would remove ammonia anyways? if anything the carbon would make the ammonia worse, breaking the chlormine into NH3 neither of which you want. di might work maybe.
 
I used a cheaper brads test kits and kept getting ammonia readings. I changed to red sea and problem solved
 
don't think it's the test kit, because i don't get a reading on the display tank test. using the tropic marin test kits. but maybe should take it to LFS to check.
 
It is very difficult to test RO water using chemical test kits as the water will have almost zero ionic balance and no buffer system. Most chemical test kits rely on a steady Ph and in most cases cause false readings.
 
well the tap water, the ro water and the mixed saltwater all give me a reading of 1ppm so what do i do then if i can't rely on the test kit... how do i know i even have ammonia in the water?
 
the question though would a di unit remove the ammonia? if so does the dd ro unit have a di unit that can added to it?
 
Did you manage to sort it out?
 
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i would look at a DI resin, or if in emergencies use Seachem Safe or Prime
 
replaced the sediment filter and carbon made a small improvement showing between 0.5 and 1ppm. haven't had a chance to get a tds meter yet.

though on a side note, had some salt water made up standing outside where the temp dropped so much this weekend, when i warmed it up to use for a water change it showed only 0.2ppm (also was standing around for about 1 week) wonder why the ammonia reduced?? was tested at 1ppm 24 hours after the salt was added.
 
think i'll also replace the membrane, had a constant drip a while back (thread somewhere else) might be used up/damaged aswell
 
a question on prime, can this be overdosed? from what i understand it only binds the ammonia for 24 hours so if you dose again after that would it just keep the ammonia bound indeffinately?
 
The reverse osmosis side of it isn’t for ammonia removal.
I don’t know whether you have this but we have chloramine in our tap water, which means a chem bind of chlorine and ammonia.
A cheap and basic neutraliser from the lfs for freshwater use will not lock up ammonia; it separates the two and removes them.
These do not work in saltwater, only the locking up ammonia for a time works in saltwater.
Filtering out ammonia has to be done via your coconut carbon filter cartridge before the RO bladder or this will destroy the bladder over time .
If you are making up your own salt water and ammonia is present in the freshwater part of it before salt is added, the chloride part of the salt will lock up the ammonia and it will be a problem.
Change sediment and carbon filter cartridges each 4 to a max of six months and ro bladder each 4 to 5 years.
 
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semi agree with you and good point about the chloromine.
i was waiting to see if that was going to pop up or not.
we generally dont have chloromine in our water but there are areas like ballito in kzn and a few in jhb that i know have that do have chloromine.
i agree that a large carbon bed is the best way to remove chloromine....
changing the r.o.membrane will do nothing.
id get a 20" big blue industrial filter housing and load it with granular activated carbon and run it through as slow as possible before the r.o.unit.
this will remove the chloromine and protect the membrane.

well pointed out pkc;)
 
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