ammonia in paro tanks

Hello,

Just find this and thats quite interesting topic. I posed myself the same question some time ago. Becouse I was able to detect some low but measurable levels of NH4+ (0,5 mg/l) I was never able to find any extensive info about NH4+ longterm toxicity even in mass aquaculture guides and theses on water chemistry. All I was able to find is that NH4+ has a very limited ability to permeate cell membranes and that is why we do not see any symptoms of poisoning. The problem is that in most tanks with pH as low as we prepare for paros, the nitrification proces known from “normal” tanks is probably not present, as from the information I have, most of the strains of nitrification bacteriae basicly stop their metabolism under pH 6,5. Some archea strains are beleaved to be responsible for the nitrogene cyclus in low pH waters instead. There is a topic on this on Seriously fish. com but also very little helpful info, just a lot of guessing. I spotted another fact, that even though there were no fast growing plants in my tanks, the level of amonia was not growing significantly. To prove that nitrification as we know it from other tanks is working, you would have to make sure that NO3 levels goes up (but that does not have to be the case, some strains are capable of denitrification too, under specific conditions), so that would need some long term experiment I had no time to do untill now. What I did is that started to measure NH4+ levels in all my tanks including new setups. Here we get to the interesting point. I had a new tank that was newly setup just 2 days before with no fish, waiting for the pH to go down for a pair of Laimosemion xiphidius. I was able to detect again about 0,5 mg/L NH4+. That seemed strange becouse I used pure RO water mixed with enough tap water to encrease the conductivity to 20µS which is in my case about 50 ml of tap water for one liter of RO water. As I was quite sure any such levels of NH4+ would be nonsensic in tap water from water mains in a big town, I felt like the only reasonable explanation was the peat granules were responsible for this. So i started an experiment with different kinds of peat form different sources. As a killifish breader I had like 6 different types of peat at hand, so I used 1 liter plastic containers for food storing, each with 1 liter of RO water ( no NH4+ measurable) and 10% volume of peat ( I used peat moss, granules, two black peats sold localy in my country for aquaristics pusposes and two garden peats. I covered the tanks to avoid polution and left them stand for 24 hours. In all of the tank certain levels of NH4+ were measurable, from 0,5 mg/l up to 2 mg/l (in all above cases Sera NH3/NH4+ test was used). Sera super peat granules with level of 0,5 mg/l, Fluval peat moss (peat fibers) 1mg/l. One of the garden peats 2mg/l. I am planning to visit some peat bogs and swamp and try to inoculate some tanks with samples of water and upper layer of peat to try to find if in any of these the could get the natural nitrogen cyclus running + try to find some tanks of mine that have no NH4+ levels measurable and inoculate some tanks with mesurable levels to see if it changes stuff. As I work from home and I am already slacking quite a lot investing much more time in to my fish than I should + have some algae feeding to moina project running right now, this will take some time for me to start with it. It would be great if we could collect sama data from other members about it too or some info from natural paro localities if there are any levels of NH4+ measurable. It could very well work in a way where such nutrients are processed after the water from peat bogs reaches bigger streams and rivers. All I can say now, that anyone using peat for example for water conditioning as most killifish breeders do, is probably dosing some NH4+ in the water. It would be nice if anyone could try to repeat my experiment and try to measure the levels for longer period of time. Of course I will post here as soon as I have some more results and observations. End of next year mostl likely 😀

The photometer looks cool Dorothee. Do they have their own special kit of tests for it or it is somehow calibrable with any/most tests. My German is so bad that I am not able to get this from the user manual 🙁

Thanks again, I thought that should be possible given the basic principles used for these measures. Will probably get one sooner or later when I have time to do more research on this and when I am sure which tests are worth going for. Photometry will sadly only improve readings, not the test itself.