Is too little ammonia a bad thing?

[azpt]

I've setup a quarantine tank. I bought the cheapest fish I could find at the LFS. Plopped him in, wanted to see if he lived. He lived for a few days, then slowed down, then rolled over.

In setting up the tank, I'm using a hang on filter. I shoved established sand from my LFS into a nylon bag and put it into the hang on. I also shoved some of that blue bio filter stuff that I had on my main display for a couple of months as a way of getting established bacteria.

I have the heater and a powerhead. It's a 40 gal square tank. I doesn't have anything but PVC joints in it because I was going to use it for copper screening of all incoming fish.

But for some reason I can't keep anything alive in there. (before I even try any copper treatments) I've checked all my levels, and everything looks good. The only thing out of range according to these charts is the ammonia. My ammonia level is at .002 Is this a bad thing?

Anyways... the rest of my numbers are as follows,
PH= 8.2
Alkalinity= .75
Temp= 77
Nitrite=.005
Nitrate= 1.5
Ammonia = (this one's tricky) according to the Marine Labs kit I bought, I measure the amount of dissolved ammonia which was not very much, .25 then use the chart provided using PH and temp to determine a number of 8.0, then multiply 8.0 by .25 and get .002
Salinity= 1.019

What am I missing? Is ammonia too low? Is that even possible? What else could be killing fish that I'm putting in there? hhhmmmm??????

[leebca]

If you multiply 8.0 by 0.25 the answer is 2.0

Then again, maybe they don't want to be your pets. :(

[azpt]

meant to say, .08 x .25 = .02

Must of been doing some fuzzy math =)

Let me try again...

the ammonia test says .25, the chart says 8% (not 8).
Multiply 8% by .25 and you get 2%.

What should the ammonia level be at?
What is toxic?

[leebca]

There are two different kinds of ammonia. At a low pH the ammonia more or less becomes less toxic. As pH goes up the ammonia converts to the toxic kind. If you want more details you might want to post a question in The Chemistry Forum. :)

There is no such thing as 'too low of ammonia' concentration when it comes to fish health. But it seems you're unsure just what ammonia level your tank has. As far as toxicity, the level of ammonia that is tolerated by fishes vary. Some are sensitive to as little as 0.05 ppm. Others can handle it very high (off most scales).