What do you think is causing you to have an ammonia reading? Do you think it is real?
Before you answer consider this. Pretty much what is bad for AOB is bad for NOB. So if you want to suggest that the presence of ammonia is due to a loss in nitrifying capacity of the AOB, capacity loss should apply to the NOB. In fact, nirtospira are a bit more heat sensitive than nitrosomonas if I remember right. Now I assume you are using an API kit so this tells me an addition of .5 ppm ammonia above the capacity for the AOB to handle it should have two results.
1. The AOB should multiply to the extent it takes to handle this ammonia. Moreover, I know the bacteria also are able to change how much they process before they need to divide. So a small increase in ammonia can be handled by their increasing the rate at which they process. If the ammonia increases by more than they can handle, the reproduce and handle it that way. This implies there is an every increasing amount of ammonia originating to keep creating your readings? It appears as if the ammonia is increasing faster than the bacteria can keep up.
2. I there is more ammonia and the AOB are converting it, even on a lagging basis, .5 ppm of excess ammonia should produce in the range of 1.3 ppm of nitrite above and beyond what had been created. So again, where is this nitrite? Moreover, the increase is .25 to .5 ppm.
3. Moreover, the increase is .25 to .5 ppm. Assuming you cycled your tank to be able to handle 3 ppm of ammonia, that is an increase in ammonia of between 8 and 16%. Since the bacteria can double in 8 to 12 hours under good conditions. How long should it take for them to reproduce to increase their numbers by 8 -16%? So I would then argue that to get a reading of .25 to .5 ppm from an increase in ammonia that the actual increase has to be even higher since the bacteria would shift capacity upwards and or reproduce to some extent in reaction to an increase in ammonia levels.
4. I also know that there are a number of things which can cause ammonia tests, be it a $4,000 Hach kit or a $5 API kit, to give inaccurate readings. Any amount of iron is one. Can you say that the heat has not caused a rise in the iron in your tap water? Turbity, aka cloudiness, will cause results to be off. High levels of nitrate will cause results to be off. There are actually lab protocols for how to compensate for such things in order to obtain accurate readings.
And if heat caused ammonia in tanks, almost any tank should always have ammonia. Just take a temperature reading in the middle of the night vs in the middle of the day and you can see that. Here is another simple test you can try. Do two tap water tests. Do the first with water from the cold side of your tap. Let it run a bit to be clearly cold. Then repeat the test with hot water from your tap. Let it run so its coming out a bit warmer than your tank water. See what the readings are.
While it is certainly possible that the ammonia readings being reported here are real, in light of the above and in the absence of other explanations which would justify the presence of elevated ammonia, my gut reaction is that its the test results that may be wrong rather than the ammonia being real.
One last observation, if heat is responsible for ammonia increasing, should there not be multiple reports of this happening from our members who live in the same regions/areas when there is a heatwave? Should we not be able to read about this phenomenon on other sites as well?
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