Water Change Trauma

[reg]

Last night I did the first 25% water change in my week old 29 gallon tank. All of the gravel vacuuming went fine. I filled up a clean bucket with tap water and added the Amquel and Novaqua. I know that my tap water has .25 ppm ammonia by default. After 10 minutes, my test kit was still showing the presence of ammonia. Thus, I had to use bottled water to fill up my tank( about an 1.5 inches from the black rim). This totally freaked out my fish. One of the pearl danios lept from the water when I approached (he was fine) and all of my pearls raced around for quite some time. My cory cats appeared fine, and everyone was back to normal this morning. Do you have any input? I don't want my fish to flip every week. Also, I have read that some products turn ammonia into ammonium or something, which isn't toxic, but will still register on the test kits. Could this have been what I was experiencing?

Thank you

 

[Tolak]

If it was a 1 part liquid test kit it was reading ammonium as ammonia.

 

[reg]

It is the API liquid ammonia test kit.

 

[Tolak]

It's reading ammonium as ammonia. This is harmless to fish, but still used the same as ammonia by your bio filtration.

 

[reg]

Thank you! This will make my life so much easier. Do you have any advice about the frayed fins or the stressing of the fish?

 

[Amunet]

Ah don't worry too much about danios. I made the mistake of getting fish to cycle our 28gal... and have been doing daily water changes for over a month now and they freak out every single time that syphon goes into the water.
AS for frayed fins... hmm... maybe you could take out the fish that has it, put them into a hospital tank and treat with something like Melafix.

 

[reg]

All 6 of my cories have frayed fins, and I don't have another tank. I think that I'll just keep an eye on them and hope for the best.