Free Vs Total Ammonia in a QT

[Shilpan Patel]

Hey guys!
For the last 2 years when I quarantine, I cycle my tank until ammonia hits 0, and then I start looking for fish to buy and usually a few days or a week later I’ll have a fish in there (I don’t test nitrite).
ive just changed from API test kit to SeaChem. So now I can read total ammonia vs free. For the last 2 days my total ammonia is reading 0.05, and free ammonia is 0. I’ve still got the whole shrimp sitting in there rotting away it’s been there for about 2 weeks (150L tank, I added 2 cups of rubble rubble from my DT to help the cycle along).

so how do you interpret total ammonia? Do you also wait for that to go to 0 before adding fish? Or is it just the free ammonia to get to 0? The SeaChem instructions says free is less toxic than dangerous but I don’t know what that means for when I can add fish.

 

[Shilpan Patel]

Hey guys!
For the last 2 years when I quarantine, I cycle my tank until ammonia hits 0, and then I start looking for fish to buy and usually a few days or a week later I’ll have a fish in there (I don’t test nitrite).
ive just changed from API test kit to SeaChem. So now I can read total ammonia vs free. For the last 2 days my total ammonia is reading 0.05, and free ammonia is 0. I’ve still got the whole shrimp sitting in there rotting away it’s been there for about 2 weeks (150L tank, I added 2 cups of rubble rubble from my DT to help the cycle along).

so how do you interpret total ammonia? Do you also wait for that to go to 0 before adding fish? Or is it just the free ammonia to get to 0? The SeaChem instructions says free is less toxic than dangerous but I don’t know what that means for when I can add fish.

 

[Shilpan Patel]

Hey guys!
For the last 2 years when I quarantine, I cycle my tank until ammonia hits 0, and then I start looking for fish to buy and usually a few days or a week later I’ll have a fish in there (I don’t test nitrite).
ive just changed from API test kit to SeaChem. So now I can read total ammonia vs free. For the last 2 days my total ammonia is reading 0.05, and free ammonia is 0. I’ve still got the whole shrimp sitting in there rotting away it’s been there for about 2 weeks (150L tank, I added 2 cups of rubble rubble from my DT to help the cycle along).

so how do you interpret total ammonia? Do you also wait for that to go to 0 before adding fish? Or is it just the free ammonia to get to 0? The SeaChem instructions says free is less toxic than dangerous but I don’t know what that means for when I can add fish.

Ahh don’t worry now
I tested it today and both are reading 0.

 

[W1ngz]

Free ammonia is the toxic kind. From the Seneye documentation:

Traditionally NH3 is very hard to measure and confused with NH4 total ammonia (ammonium). NH3 is free ammonia and it is often confused with NH4 total ammonia. Free ammonia forms part of Total ammonia but it is the only toxic part. Free ammonia forms an equilibrium with total ammonia based on pH and temperature.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

In general, go with total ammonia measurements. The ratio between the two depends only on pH, and total ammonia measurements gives you a better chance of detecting a small amount. The free and total ammonia interconvert thousands of times a second, so to talk about them as if they were different things is a simplification that misleads reefers about what it means.