Re: [APD] help -- my goldfish are dying

[Donald Hellen <donhellen at horizonview_net>]

The best and simplest explanation I've seen of the
ammonia-chlorine combination in chloramine is here:

http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_chlorine.htm

Depending on your personal beliefs, doing a partial
water change and treating for chlorine only may be OK.
Or not, depending on where you set your caution or
danger threshold. 

Since ammonia is only 31% of the chloramine chemical,
you're at 0.31 ppm of ammonia with typical chloramine
levels, but if your water treatment plant goes crazy
and puts in the maximum allowable by the EPA, it would
be several times higher. 

If you then dilute the ammonia left in the water 10 or
20 to 1 with the rest of the tank water, the level goes
way down to where many feel are acceptable levels.
That's IF your treatment plant doesn't go crazy. You
can test for chlorine amounts if you're interested.

You probably can't go wrong if you use something for
the ammonia. I don't, but just because our goldfish is
15 years old doesn't mean that treating the ammonia
wouldn't be better. It does add one more chemical to
the mix in the tank if you're comfortable with that. 

The example under "UPDATE" on the web page assumes the
worst case scenario. If  you limit your changes to 10%
and your water doesn't smell strongly of chlorine (not
the worst case scenario), you may feel comfortable with
the amounts of ammonia. 

There is a lot of disagreement on this so you need to
make your own decision since it is YOUR fish that
you're concerned about. 

Donald

On Sun, 28 May 2006 21:30:53 -0700, Vaughn Hopkins
<hoppycalif at yahoo_com> wrote:

>In a planted tank the ammonia doesn't stay there very long, since the 
>plants use it up pretty quickly.  So, when  you get a zero reading it 
>just means that there is none at that particular time, but that doesn't 
>mean there wasn't quite a bit some other time.  This still might not be 
>the problem, but there must be a real reason why we take such care to 
>treat our water with Prime every time we change water.
>
>Vaughn H.
>
>On Sunday, May 28, 2006, at 06:55 PM, Jamie Bright wrote:
>
>> Thanks for the input.  If it's the NovAqua+, wouldn't my ammonia 
>> measurement register something sometimes (it's ALWAYS been zero since 
>> my first month with my first tank ever, and after a week or so in the 
>> new tank while it was being cycled)?  Or should I be measuring 
>> something else?  I am heartbroken to think all my water changes could 
>> have harmed them.  Ugh.  I appreciate the good detective work, though.
>>
>> jamie
--------------------------------
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
   -Albert Einstein

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