Whats the deal with Ammonia

[kope1078]

Need some input on a little ammonia situation I've come across. I had to set up a 29g hospital tank for my fish(ich...finally getting rid of it the right way) which I'm treating with cupramine. I've had a little ammonia spike(.25 reading) so I have been doing about 50% water changes daily to get it down but not having any luck. I decided to check the ammonia in the salt water I keep mixed in a rubbermaid garbage can with heater and a 1200 gph powerhead, I always keep about 25 gallons on hand, I got a reading of .25 on that water which was a day or two old. So I thought maybe my can was causing this so I put 5 gallons of distilled water in a bucket and tested the ammonia and it read 0. I then added my salt and whammo ammonia was at .25. I took a sample to my lfs store and he tested the same high ammonia. I thought maybe I had some bad salt so I bought a small bag and went home and ran the test again, 0 ammonia until I added the salt, then .25. I'm using Instant Ocean reef crystals....Is this normal. My main display which is fishless at the moment is reading 0 ammonia.

Any input or help with this would be great, thanks.

[James404]

It is pretty common to see ammonia in some salt mixes including IO. I use oceanic myself, which is ammonia, nitrate and phosphate free.

[W8lifts]

well it seems like you are using tap water and not ro/di water

[kope1078]

well it seems like you are using tap water and not ro/di water

No...Like I said in my post...distilled water which was tested before I added salt.

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

As mentioned above, many salt mixes have a little ammonia in them.

I discuss ammonia here:

Ammonia and the Reef Aquarium
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-02/rhf/index.php

from it:

Sources of Ammonia in Reef Aquaria: Salt Mixes

There are a variety of sources of ammonia in reef aquaria. Minor sources include: 1) tap water (especially if it contains chloramine and is not treated with a deionizing resin) and 2) impurities in salt mixes and other additives. It has previously been shown that the total NH4-N ranged from 0.55 to 11.9 micromole/kg (0.008 to 0.17 ppm total NH4-N) in an analysis of eight brands of artificial seawater mixes. At the higher end of the scale, those levels will be detected with an ammonia test kit and can present potential toxicity concerns if fish are kept at those levels (see below). These levels of ammonia may be introduced from impurities in calcium chloride and magnesium chloride, where ammonia is a well known impurity resulting from some of the commercial manufacturing processes used (such as the Solvay process, which involves ammonia).

Calcium and magnesium additives can also be a significant source of ammonia, especially for aquarists who are trying to use inexpensive sources of bulk calcium or magnesium chloride. I discussed testing calcium chloride for ammonia in a previous article.