Miss Wiggle
Practically perfect in every way
Hi guys,
slightly random query on someones thread in the new to the hobby forum, wondering if you lot can shed any light on it.
when they take water from the tap the ammonia reads 0ppm, 12hrs later it reads either 0.25ppm or 0.50ppm and we're trying to work out why it is rising.
we've checked that it's not the dechlor releasing ammonia from the chloramine bond (i.e. ran some water, tested it, dechlorinated it, waited half an hr or so, tested it again, no rise in levels, it only raises after about 12 hrs. same thing is happening when you don't dechlorinate the water), we've also checked it's not the container by using various different containers some of them brand new. The results have also been double checked with another test kit so it's not a dodgy reading.
now the practical issue here is that any mature cycled filter (which his is) should be able to process this little blip of ammonia after a water change no problem, plenty of people have tap water with 0.25ppm of ammonia in and manage fine. His isn't and we can't fathom why, I'm starting to wonder if this is a skewed reading for some reason or maybe isn't actually ammonia but something else that the test kit can pick up. Can you think of anything that this could be?
I'm thinking, most water uses in the home (washing, drinking, cooking etc) are short term, so water companies often add things to the water which will mean when they come out of the tap they are within set parameters for the next few hours, but these things will either gass off or be used up a while later (experienced this with water companies using pH stabilisers which only work for a day or so after the water is drawn, then it'll rise/fall to it's 'natural' level). So I'm thinking is there anything that water companies use to do this for ammonia?
slightly random query on someones thread in the new to the hobby forum, wondering if you lot can shed any light on it.
when they take water from the tap the ammonia reads 0ppm, 12hrs later it reads either 0.25ppm or 0.50ppm and we're trying to work out why it is rising.
we've checked that it's not the dechlor releasing ammonia from the chloramine bond (i.e. ran some water, tested it, dechlorinated it, waited half an hr or so, tested it again, no rise in levels, it only raises after about 12 hrs. same thing is happening when you don't dechlorinate the water), we've also checked it's not the container by using various different containers some of them brand new. The results have also been double checked with another test kit so it's not a dodgy reading.
now the practical issue here is that any mature cycled filter (which his is) should be able to process this little blip of ammonia after a water change no problem, plenty of people have tap water with 0.25ppm of ammonia in and manage fine. His isn't and we can't fathom why, I'm starting to wonder if this is a skewed reading for some reason or maybe isn't actually ammonia but something else that the test kit can pick up. Can you think of anything that this could be?
I'm thinking, most water uses in the home (washing, drinking, cooking etc) are short term, so water companies often add things to the water which will mean when they come out of the tap they are within set parameters for the next few hours, but these things will either gass off or be used up a while later (experienced this with water companies using pH stabilisers which only work for a day or so after the water is drawn, then it'll rise/fall to it's 'natural' level). So I'm thinking is there anything that water companies use to do this for ammonia?
