Is there Ammonia in Tap Water?
Yes, there can be ammonia in tap water. Use a liquid ammonia test to see if you have ammonia coming right out of your tap. If you have a cycled tank, this is no problem, because the bacteria will deal with in quickly. However, if you keep say, bettas in uncycled 2.5 gallon tanks, this does not make for happy bettas. In that case, you’d either want to move them to cycled tanks, or, use reverse osmosis water with a product called R/O right, which adds vital minerals back to the water. Some people might recommend using something like Prime or Amquel+ to combat the ammonia. However, that is only a temporary solution. Prime and Amquel+ can bind up some of the ammonia, but not permanently. Eventually, unless you keep adding more and more of the product, it will not be able to continue binding to the ammonia. Edit: How long has the tank been running? If it is new, or only a few weeks old, it is in the process called ‘cycling’. Basically, your filter is building up a colony of beneficial bacte
