Ammonia and Nitrite

Using Chemicals to Remove or Neutralize Ammonia in a Fish Tank

Using a chemical to bind, take up, neutralize, or block ammonia, is not only unnecessary and undesired, but it is counterproductive and will be harmful to the stability of your tank in the long run. Additionally, using these chemicals can be misleading.

These chemicals will bind the ammonia into a form that is not going to be bothersome to your fish, but also is unavailable to your biological filter. This means that your biological filter will not have the nutrients it needs to stay viable and it will deteriorate. Then, when the chemical has absorbed all the ammonia it can, the ammonia will begin to build up in the tank in a form that is dangerous to your fish and will cause ammonia stress. Since your biological filter has been being starved, it is unable to process this waste and your tank will begin to cycle again.

Also, these chemicals often do not bind the ammonia away in a manner that makes the ammonia undetectible by standard ammonia tests, so it will still appear that your tank has a high ammonia level if and when you test the water for ammonia. In addition, some of these chemicals will even read as ammonia themselves on some tests, so you may get a reading for a much higher ammonia level than in is the tank. This can be very misleading and confusing, and it is all because of the use of an unnecessary chemical treatment.

Though ammonia removing chemicals can be helpful in the short term for dealing with a crisis situation, their regular use should be strongly discouraged.

Rather than using a chemical to neutralize the ammonia, the tank should be allowed to cycle so that it can process the ammonia itself through biological filtration, or the problem that is causing the high ammonia level (overpopulation, over feeding, insufficient water changes, poor filtration, or poor filter maintenance) should be addressed so that the ammonia is no longer a problem.

My snail mail address is: Keith Seyffarth, 217 W. Koch, #308, Bozeman, MT 59715.
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Page most recently modified: January 13 2008 19:05:29.