Need A Chemistry Lesson

[FishGuest5123]

My tap water tested at 2ppm ammonia today. I have a new fish coming so this freaked me out. I then tested with Seachem Free and Total Ammonia test kit and both the free and the total tests came out at 0. What does this mean? My city uses chloramine if that helps any.

 

[Byron]

The chloramine is likely the ammonia. Chlorine and ammonia are bound together to form chloramine. The API and most hobby test kits will likely read the ammonia part; more scientific/technical testers will likely separate these out, but this is just my surmise. We have had a few threads where "ammonia" turned up in testys over long periods of time around 0.25 or 0.50 and it was apparently the chloramine aspect.

 

[seangee]

I have observed that Seachem Prime can give a false positive ammonia reading, so if you added extra prime that could be the cause. Not suggesting you did - just saying what I have seen in the past

 

[FishGuest5123]

I have observed that Seachem Prime can give a false positive ammonia reading, so if you added extra prime that could be the cause. Not suggesting you did - just saying what I have seen in the past

It was straight from the tap, nothing added.