Water quality question?

Question

Ammonia is .5, Ph is 6.8, water is soft (about 50), nitrites 0, nitrates 20, temp 77F. The strip guide says my water is safe. I've read on here that any ammonia will kill my fish. Who's right, the strip guide or you all?

Answer 1

The strip guide is more correct in this case in one sense. It should never be said that any ammonia at all will kill your fish, obviously that's not true. You have ammonia and fish, right? At a point ammonia becomes deadly to fish and also long term exposure can be deadly. What might not kill them in an hour may if it stays that way for 24 hours. Luckily your low pH works in your favor making the ammonia you have less toxic for your fish. Lower temperatures do the same thing so you could drop the temperature in your tank a few degrees and any ammonia there is even less toxic.

Now, the test strip is talking about one time, short term exposure. For that your water is ok, but for long term exposure it's not. I would suggest you do a 50% water change to get the ammonia levels down. If this is a new tank, get used to the idea because you have several weeks ahead of fighting ammonia until your tank cycles. If that's the case you should lower your temperature to about 72-73 to help with the toxicity of the ammonia. Try to keep the ammonia under .5 or so until the tank cyces an takes it to 0. Watch you nitrites too. Once it starts to cycle thy will increase and cycle back down just like the ammonia. Here's a link to help you understand the process if your new to all of this.

http://www.firsttankguide.net/cycle.php

Hope that helps

MM

MM

Answer 2

The ammonia is not safe. .5 is borderline and correction needs to be made, namely a 20-25% water change. The tank obviously hasn't cycled yet.

Answer 3

Regardless of who's right or wrong your best bet would probably be to do a water change now. Just to be on the safe side.

Magic man has given you some pretty good information, and I suggest you take his advice.

Good luck.
E.