# what's your thought?



## somebody (May 13, 2014)

I'm tired of dealing with the ammonia in the tap! I bought a pur faucet filter in hopes that it would work, it does work but only for 20 gallons then ammonia goes right back up. I do a water change and ammonia goes up to 1 ppm and after 24 hours it's at 0. But then nitrates go up to 80ppm. I can't perform my water changes to reduce nitrates cause they just spike right back up with all the ammonia. I don't want a ro/di but at this point I'm thinking that's my only option. I don't feel like dealing with a buffer, storing water, buying more filters and resin, or dealing with the headache of where to mount it. I'm about ready to throw in the towel, the hobby is supposed to be fun but how is it fun when you do what you need to do to fix a problem and it only gets worse.

What can I do to fix this?
can I get away without a ro/di?

If a ro/di is the only option:

is the buffer necessary? I have 120 lbs of limestone and crushed coral and pfs substrate.
How much of the ingredients in the buffer recipie do I need? 150 gal system.


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## workharddieproud (Nov 7, 2013)

I fill my 125G with a counter top filter from AquaCera, a Twin HCP it has 2 filters, 1 CeraMetix and 1 Nitrate. Initial cost is about 180.00 total. But, it removes EVERYTHING from your tap, I don't even use Prime or any other dechlorinator. The main filter, Metix is cleanable and lasts a long time, been using it for 6 months and I change about 40G every week. Pure water goes in the tank, I just slide a rubber hose over the outlet of the counter top filter and fill up my buckets while I siphon out water and clean the tank. Also purchased a "bucket heater" Alied Precision Brand from Tractor Supply, it's about 37.00, after 1 bucket fills I put the heater in it to warm the water while the other bucket is filling, takes about 12 minutes to heat 5 gallon to 80F. I also use API Proper Ph 8.2, works great.


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## sumthinfishy (Jan 26, 2013)

do u use water conditioner? use "prime" it removes chlorine, ammonia, etc.. add it to the tap water. it removes chlorine and ammonia. very easy


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## somebody (May 13, 2014)

Work hard:
I'll have to check it out. Is it like a mini rodi?

Sumthinfishy:
I use prime everytime. But I figured it only made ammonia/chlorine less toxic. Not completely remove it. Being that there is still ammonia in the tap it causes my nitrates to go up which is the whole part of a water change. I also dose the tank with prime once a week to help with toxicity under that same belief.

I also explored making a diy water filter and put ammonia removing media in it to where when I fill the tank all water passes over the media. I'm just not positive if the ammonia is ammonia and not chloramines testing as ammonia.


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## sumthinfishy (Jan 26, 2013)

it says "removes". its all i use and seems to always work. how long has your tank been running? what type of filtration do u have on it?


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## workharddieproud (Nov 7, 2013)

It's a house tap water filter. I've been using it since end of May, and also use it for drinking water of course.


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## somebody (May 13, 2014)

About 10 months now it has 55 gallon sump with about 800 gph flow


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## workharddieproud (Nov 7, 2013)

Check out the Doulton.com website and look at different options there for filters, I feel your pain, I've been spending money since I started in this hobby last year in August. Lot's of learning and mistakes, allot of conflicting opinions on fish keeping, some say do and others say don't, go figure.


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## somebody (May 13, 2014)

I'll check it out but for that price I might as well do ro/di. Thanks for the idea.

Sumthinfishy:
How long do you let your prime water sit before adding it to the tank?


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## sumthinfishy (Jan 26, 2013)

i actually dump the prime into the tank as i fill it with my python. whats your ammonia reading out of the tap? not the tank once u add it, but tap water itself? i would check my water out of tap, then add prime and check it again. i think that your issue isnt from the tap water u are adding, but rather a tank issue itself. is it possible that u have waste built up in the sump or somewhere else in the filtration system that needs to be cleaned? do u have plants or driftwood that could be rotting and causing the prob? i'm just kinda throwing out some thoughts.


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## somebody (May 13, 2014)

Well i just performed a test:
Tap 1.0 ppm 
Tap w/prime .50 ppm
Tap w/prime after 5 min .25ppm
Tap w/prime after 1 hour .25ppm

Called my lfs and asked them, prime only removes chlorine/chloramines instantly. Amm, nitrites, nitrates can take up to a couple days to be removed. Prime immediately makes a/n/n less toxic. That was more along the lines of what I understood prime to be.

Does anyone have any experience with ammonia removing media? Specifically at which rate it removes ammonia? I have an idea on building a water filter and putting that in there to remove it before it goes in the tank.

I do have plants but there is no sign of them rotting. No driftwood.


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## sumthinfishy (Jan 26, 2013)

u testing with with strips or drops?


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## sumthinfishy (Jan 26, 2013)

if using strips, then i would not consider accurate. my gut says its not the tap water causing your prob. its a tank issue. i could be wrong, but if it were me i would check out that avenue also. good luck. keep us posted


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## somebody (May 13, 2014)

Drops. 
I do have plants and I also have been adding cichlid lake salt. The plants are looking a little dreary (melting). I also added 22 fish in the tank. All of this was done in a matter of 1 month and I think all of this combined is now showing. As soon as I can I'm going to off 15 of my baby labs to my lfs. I have another brood on the way and witnessed another breeding ritual tonight. I'm also going to do 3 or 4, 10-15 gallon wc's in the next week when I get home. I might have shocked the system because I went from 20 to 45 fish, whole bunch of plants, and started adding salt all in a month time frame. Thanks for the replies guys.


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## sumthinfishy (Jan 26, 2013)

ok now that makes sense. adding plants is always going to bottom out your ph. i run crushed coral in an hob filter on my planted tank to buffer ph so it doesnt drop (especially when first added). the salt cannot be used with plants. salt kills plants. so between adding the plants, killing the plants, and doubling your bioload all in one month i can see why u have a problem.


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## somebody (May 13, 2014)

My ph has always been 8.2 and never moves. I have about 10 lbs of cc in my sump. I have been noticing the plants slowly melting but I refuse to remove them cause they are so darn beautiful and really ties in the tank well. I don't want to get rid of them so I'm going to try my hardest to have removing them be the last resort.


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## sumthinfishy (Jan 26, 2013)

its your tank. do what u want, but i'll tell u right now that if your ammonia and nitrates are as u say they are then i guarantee u that your ph is not at a constant 8.2. the ph will swing as everything else does. we have established that the adding and killing of plants as well as increased bioload is your problem. not your tap water. the measures u take to correct it is up to u. at least now u know what the cause is.


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## The Cichlid Guy (Oct 18, 2014)

Cichlid lake salts are fine to use with plants. I use them to treat my soft tap water, and still have to trim back my plants every couple of weeks.


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## sumthinfishy (Jan 26, 2013)

depends on type of plants. most plants dont do well in salt.


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## somebody (May 13, 2014)

Jungle vallisneria and amazon swords. Like I said I've only noticed the melt since I've been adding the salt. I knew/know salt isn't good for plant and I knew/know the won't thrive with salt added, that's why I dose half the recommendation. I also have 4 corydora in the sump and they are showing no signs of salt added. I'm not going to add more salt and see if the plants bounce back. They grow but they also melt.

And let's speak hypotheticaly. I have a ph probe from a previous salt water setup. It gets calibrated twice a month. Everytime I feed them I check temp and ph . 79°f/ 8.2 ph. With everything we've been talking about what does that mean?


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## Deeda (Oct 12, 2012)

somebody said:


> I do have plants and I also have been adding cichlid lake salt. The plants are looking a little dreary (melting). I also added 22 fish in the tank. All of this was done in a matter of 1 month and I think all of this combined is now showing. As soon as I can I'm going to off 15 of my baby labs to my lfs. I have another brood on the way and witnessed another breeding ritual tonight. I'm also going to do 3 or 4, 10-15 gallon wc's in the next week when I get home. I might have shocked the system because I went from 20 to 45 fish, whole bunch of plants, and started adding salt all in a month time frame. Thanks for the replies guys.


Sorry you are having problems. Let's try to narrow things down a bit.

When you add new plants to a tank, it is very common to experience melting especially if these plants were grown emersed at the vendor or the water/light conditions are different from what they were growing in/at before.

The addition of 22 fish within a one month period may have been the biggest change and is probably the biggest impact in water quality especially if they weren't juveniles.

Cichlid salts are not always needed, you first need to determine what your GH (hardness) and KH (alkalinity) are of your tap water. If you don't have these test kits, I suggest you buy them.

You mention you have a sump, can we have more details of its design and what media you have in it? It's possible that a lot of the gunk and detritus is built up in it and needs to be removed.

Finally, the ammonia reading from the tap is probably due to the use of chloramine from the water department. Prime will bind the ammonia and make it less toxic and your bacteria colony in the filter(s) will eventually process it. However, you will still get an ammonia reading when you use the test kit as it doesn't differentiate between toxic and non-toxic ammonia.

If you don't have nitrates in your tap water, my guess is that you need to increase the percentage or frequency of your water changes to remove the nitrate from the system. A 50% water change should drop your nitrates by 50%. However, removing built up organics in your sump also need to be addressed because if they are out of sight, they are still contributing to the problem.


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## somebody (May 13, 2014)

Ok on the plants

The fish I added were 7 adults and the rest were juvies.

The sump:








I have bio balls in media area 1, pillow stuffing in media area two. The stuffing is replaced once a month. Mixed bed in the "fuge" is pfs and has 4 corydora. There is a 30 ppi sponge catching solid pieces of detrius before it enters the trickle filter.

Gh 11, kh 4-5
Tap and tank are the same


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## sumthinfishy (Jan 26, 2013)

Deeda said:


> somebody said:
> 
> 
> > I do have plants and I also have been adding cichlid lake salt. The plants are looking a little dreary (melting). I also added 22 fish in the tank. All of this was done in a matter of 1 month and I think all of this combined is now showing. As soon as I can I'm going to off 15 of my baby labs to my lfs. I have another brood on the way and witnessed another breeding ritual tonight. I'm also going to do 3 or 4, 10-15 gallon wc's in the next week when I get home. I might have shocked the system because I went from 20 to 45 fish, whole bunch of plants, and started adding salt all in a month time frame. Thanks for the replies guys.
> ...


a lot of what i said


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## Deeda (Oct 12, 2012)

From your design, I would think that the crushed coral is trapping a lot of debris. Is there any chance you can add some filter bags or filter fiber where the water enters the sump to catch any debris?


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## somebody (May 13, 2014)

I can try to. I didn't want to do that because i have those corydora in there so I wanted them to catch the food that does fall. Plus the way it falls in it constantly moves that cc so I look at it as a small moving bed filter.


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## judyok (Aug 12, 2014)

I'm having the same problem with ammonia in my tap water at 1 ppm. I've just started using the ammonia removing products in my filter and see if that slows down the nitrate build up. Prime really just renders the ammonia harmless to fish until the biological filter converts it to nitrates so you still get the nitrate build up. I'm also being a little more careful about not overfeeding. I'll let you know how it goes.


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## BillD (May 17, 2005)

Adding water 1ppm of ammonia will not yield 80ppm of nitrate. The high nitrate is from the bioload. I have never had plants cause a drop in pH in my tanks. I wish they did. Regardless, I don't see the chloramine in your water as a problem. Thousands of people have it and don't take any special steps to eliminate it, other than using prime. An RO unit wastes a lot of water.


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## judyok (Aug 12, 2014)

That's true my nitrates only climb to about 20 ppm, but it's take less than a week now instead of a full week so that is why I started adding the ammonia removing product. If it's going up to 80 ppm quickly then, yes, something else is adding to it besides tap water with ammonia at 1 ppm.


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## somebody (May 13, 2014)

Thanks for the replies....
I followed deeda and sumthinfishys' advice. I scoured the tank and looked for contributing factors such as rotting plants and wastes and such. In addition I added a nitrate reduction pad that the lfs recommended. I cut out triangles and added it to my overflow so all of the water hits it. I also got rid of 11 juvie yellow labs. Also plan on on to doing small partial water changes every day or every other day. I'll update in a week.


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## somebody (May 13, 2014)

Well after much tender love and care with the tank I: 
-Trimmed all of the plants with melt.
-Did a real good gravel vac and found a few dead leaves and such. 
-Removed 11 fish.
-40% wc's every other day. 
-added a Nitrate reducing pad to the overflow
Test now show.
8.2. ph
0 nitrite
0 ammonia
20-40 ppm nitrate
5 kh
11 gh

I also found a dead fry in the trickle filter. I have no idea how he got there seeing as the trickle filter has a sponge blocking solids from getting in. I'm sure that was contributing to 50% my nitrate problem.

No salt was re added to the tank but I don't think that salt was causing to much of a problem seeing as all of my jungle vals have runners extending out and growing new plants.

Thanks again all with the replies and the help.


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## Deeda (Oct 12, 2012)

Glad you were able to get it under control and thanks for keeping us updated.


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