Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

After my massive fish massacre, I changed out my water and topped off with city water. My initial amonia levels test registered 8ppm. I have cylede the system for over a week now and my levels are still 8ppm. I tried adding some AquaSafe aquarium water conditioner 2 days ago and my levels are still reading 8ppm. I am now thouroughly confused.

More info please... what is supplying your ammonia... I'm assuming that you haven't got fish...

So what are you adding to the source water that is producing the ammonia... at those levels?

And what, if any, means of bio-filtration do you have... growbeds??

A pic might help...

And info regarding your current air and water temps...

Not adding anything.....Water is cycling through growbeds but have nothing planted yet.

Well something is producing ammonia... and not just small amounts...

What's in your growbeds... and/or is there anything that was there before when you had your problems?

I'm using chat for my grow media. My barrels had carwash soap in them, but I cleaned them thoroughly before use. I am thinking of changing water again and replacing with either pond or well water.

What is "chat"...

Chat is very small chips of gravel like what is used for blacktopping hiways.

And the water that's currently in the system... is this the "old" water from before?

Temp?

And something must be creating that ammonia - it does not just appear by itself.

Dead fish under a pump?

What was the source water? City tap water? You mention water conditioner. If your water is treated with Chloramine, the conditioner will leave you with Ammonia in the water and if you used anything that locks up ammonia, you may never get rid of the ammonia readings in that water.

If the problem is due to treated tap water then my vote would be to dump that water and replace with the pond, well, or rain water. I use well water and life is pretty good.

ok, a few random points.

If the town water has chloramine and you treat it with conditioner then you will have one of two things.
1) free ammonia at the original chloramine ppm (very doubtful this will be 8ppm)
2) if the conditioner also contains an ammonia binder then you will have bound ammonia but this will STILL REGISTER on a test.

Both types WILL be processed by the biofilter.

test your PH and post.
test a sample of town water (conditioned) for ammonia.

post the results

I tested tap water straight out of faucet and it registered .5ppm. Which ph test do I do....high level or just ph.

do both , if the normal test registers at the top , then you need to do the high test to see where it really is

Also, is 8ppm as high as your ammonia test goes? If it is, the ammonia may be waaaay higher than that.

OK, would seem your tap water is alright....and I'm assuming that the tank was emptied after the fish deaths and refilled with tap water...

And other than some mystery "conditioners" nothing else has been added...

So where is the ammonia coming from....

Possibly it's a residual from the growbeds when you had the fish.... but that seems very unlikely....

So I'm starting to question just what might have been in the carwash soap that might be reacting and producing ammonia.....

Still, though... if you've been pumping through the growbeds for over a week... it still doesn't make sense....

My suggestion would be dump the entire system water... you'll still have some water/bacteria left in the growbeds..... refill and do a complete range of test to establish a baseline...

Do not add anything.... post the results up, and we'll see what happens...