Ammonia Testing for Water Quality

Good water quality within any aquarium is essential to the long-term health of all aquatic species.

When starting the aquarium hobby, you will hear a lot about Ammonia within the tank. This blog will help you understand where it comes from, why is it important and how to keep your fish safe from it. 

Where does Ammonia come from?

• Fish waste
• Fish respiration (breathing) 
• Left over food or organic debris.

Ammonia begins the Nitrogen Cycle and allows the start of getting the aquarium water established. When you hear the word “established”, this indicates that the water has adequate bacteria to handle the fish waste or other ammonia producing debris. This all begins or helps maintain the Nitrogen Cycle. Once ammonia is present in the water, natural occurring nitrifying bacteria will consume the ammonia into nitrite to nitrate. When a tank has a good bacterial load in the aquarium ammonia is quickly taken care of and processed though the tank. 

Why should I test my tank for ammonia? 

It’s extremely toxic to fish. It can cause scale, tail, gill damage and death. Without a proper bacterial ecosystem, ammonia can be harmful to your fish. Continuing to test for ammonia over the lifetime of the aquarium is important because it will give you more information to determine if the bacterial ecosystem is thriving or not. 

It’s common to think after the Nitrogen Cycle the aquarium is established that you will never have any issues. However, over time bacteria live and die, you add fish or the fish become larger and the aquarium Nitrogen Cycle can start over. Testing is key to see how the tank is doing! We recommend testing daily in the beginning of having an aquarium and then weekly after that with the API Ammonia Test kit or API Ammonia Test strips. 

Recommendations to help reduce or remove Ammonia from the aquarium

API® AQUA ESSENTIAL™ water conditioner will instantly remove toxic ammonia, nitrate and nitrite levels in freshwater, saltwater and planted aquariums. API AMMO LOCK™ ammonia detoxifier is proven to convert poisonous ammonia into a non-toxic form. 

Performing a partial water exchange will dilute high ammonia levels along with the addition of API AQUA ESSENTIAL (or AMMO LOCK) and API QUICK START™. API AQUA ESSENTIAL or AMMO LOCK will bind with toxic ammonia and keep your fish safe. Whereas the API QUICK START nitrifying bacteria will consume ammonia and convert into nitrite to nitrate which will shorten the Nitrogen cycle. 

Frequent testing will keep you informed of the ammonia level within your tank. Proactively keeping a maintenance schedule will keep your fish safe. Still having trouble? Please contact us at 1-800-847-0659 or through our contact page and one of our technicians can help troubleshoot.