Ammonia in new tank?

[mrsjoannh13]

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, but I have a newly planted new tank with no fish in it. I set it up on Saturday and have been doing daily 50% water changes. I'm dosing with Easy Green for the epiphyte plants and Aquarium Co-oo root tabs for the stem plants. Out of curiosity today I tested my water parameters. Obviously there are some nitrates (about 5 ppm) from the fertilizer. Nitrite is at 0. But there is detectable ammonia at about .25 maybe a bit higher. There are no fish in the tank so where is the ammonia coming from? When I do the water changes I am siphoning up any leaves or debris at the bottom of the tank so it won't decay. Is this normal? What is the ammonia source?

 

[Essjay]

There are a couple of possibilities.
Do you have a plant substrate or just plain sand/gravel? Some plant substrates leach ammonia.
Your water. Does your water provider use chlorine or chloramine? Chloramine is an ammonia and a chlorine joined together. Dechlorinators split them up and remove the chlorine but leave the ammonia in the water. A lot of water conditioners also detoxify this ammonia for around 24 hours (by the time it undetoxifies, in a cycled tank the bacteria or plants will have removed it) but it still shows up in the ammonia test.

Try testing some tap water for ammonia, or a bit of tap water with added water conditioner to see if that has an ammonia reading.

If you do have a plant substrate, you could take a bit out and put it in a tub with some fresh water and test that for ammonia after it's stood for a couple of days. Set up another tub with only water to compare the tub with substrate to.

 

[mrsjoannh13]

Do you have a plant substrate or just plain sand/gravel?

It's sand from CaribSea. Not the marine kind, just plain sand. So it should be inert.

Does your water provider use chlorine or chloramine?

It may, but I have a filter on my tap that removes chlorine, lead, etc. I just used a test strip to be sure and no chlorine is showing up in the results, as expected.

Any other thoughts? I am stumped (no pun intended cuz, you know.... driftwood).

 

[mcordelia]

same exact issue here!!! I just posted a long post in my 20gal journal about some weird parameter stuff going on in my tank (the more recent issues are my own doing, but the ammonia thing also stumped me, but I can at least share the experience!).

What I think happened in my case was two things: 1) chloramine in water (this is tricky, because the API test kit may or may not measure the ammonia that comes from tap water treated with Prime. I've both measured and not measured ammonia directly after a water change, so not sure there). 2) rotting stuff in filter/plant debris/rotting plant parts. Mine was really obvious since my plants got a little too cold for comfort in shipping, but I don't think it takes much in an uncycled tank. Another tricky thing for me, is that I STILL have bits of dead leaves that are stuck to the original plants they died on, and they don't just vacuum off. So I'm sure they're rotting and producing ammonia, but they're hard to get rid of since if I take the vac too close to the plant, the whole stem/leaf gets sucked in dislodging the plant. I suppose I could sit there and try to hand-pick off all the slime, but at the end of the day it won't really net me anything other than aesthetics I don't think.

On the plus side: consider this an automatic cycle doing its thing!!! My ammonia went away around week 3, and now I'm fighting the nitrite battle. I would have thought the "planted cycle" thing would have worked better for me, but I probably did many things wrong and was impatient, so it didn't. shame on me I guess, but here we are.

At least I have a lot of good "FAQ" entries to put into the planted cycle article that I'm working on!!

It's nice to know that I'm not the only one

 

[mrsjoannh13]

I'm not overly concerned about it. I'm sure it will correct itself in time. I can't get fish for another month or so and I have established filter media to help when I am ready to add fish. So it's all good and a fun learning experience. I just don't seem to have that much rotting plant matter in the tank to cause .25 - .5 of ammonia. I tested my filtered tap and it's showing 0 ammonia so it's definitely something happening in the tank.

This is my first planted tank so I'm just keeping a good journal and enjoying the process. Just some things I can't quite figure out. I'm sure there will be many more.

 

[Essjay]

I've just remembered a third possibility.

What test kit are you using, and what is the lighting when you read the test? The API ammonia tester is well known for the liquid looking greener than it really is under fluorescent lighting, which includes compact fluorescent bulbs.


And then it is also known that some people never see the zero colour even in well planted tanks that have been running trouble free for years. The only explanation anyone has been able to come up with is that different eyes don't see things quite the same.

 

[mrsjoannh13]

What test kit are you using, and what is the lighting when you read the test? T

I am using the API kit. I cross checked against some strips and there is definitely traces of ammonia showing up. I checked it against the water out of the filtered tap and that water shows up yellow (0 ammonia). So I can see from the color variations that there is no ammonia from my water source but definite green tint on both the API test kit and the strips indicating ammonia in the tank.

I will keep an eye on it and see what develops! Appreciate all of the thoughts and ideas.

 

[mrsjoannh13]

Okay so the only other thing I've thought of so far is I am getting that white biofilm slimy stuff on my driftwood. I know that's totally normal and will go away in a couple of weeks so I'm not really messing with it. Could that possibly cause a bit of ammonia in the tank?

 

[mcordelia]

I think @Wells or @Wills (hahah sorry guys your names are literally one letter apart!!) recently had issues with driftwood and ammonia, if I recall correctly...