Frederick B. Henry Jr. wrote:

I use Tetra AquaSafe as a water conditioner. I have the Aquarium
Pharmaceuticals test kit that has pH, High pH, Ammonia, nitrite, and
nitrate tests (4 test tubes). I also have some dip stick tests (forget
the brand, but the dip stick also does GH and KH). The ammonia has
never gone over 2 ppm. The nitrite is only just shading over 0.25 ppm.
Nitrate is always at 5 ppm. When the ammonia approches 2 ppm I do a
water change. Feed sparingly, as I said. I am at a loss...

Forgot one other thing - do you have chlorine or chloramine? Here's
what might be happening...

Cloramine = ammonia + chlorine. Treat with normal dechlor, and you end
up with quite a bit of free ammonia. Water conditioners designed for
chloramines like AquaSafe, Ammo-Lock, Prime, and AmQuel react with the
ammonia to make it nontoxic. This causes two problems:

1) The bound ammonia may not be available to feed filter bacteria.
Kordon is the only manufacturer who has actually tested to be sure
bacteria can break down the bound ammonia. I don't use other products
in cycling tanks.

2) You can get spurious ammonia test readings. AP states that its
MasterTest ammonia kit will test positive in the presence of AP
Ammo-Lock bound ammonia. Kordon's AmQuel and AmQuel+ react directly
with Nessler ammonia reagents and cause a high false positive reading
with or without ammonia. (Salicylate kits change is yellow to
greenish-yellow with increasing ammonia. Nessler kits go from clear to
orange-yellow.)

I use plain AmQuel and AP's Dry Tab kit and get reasonable ammonia
readings. You could also try switching to Tetra's ammonia kit since
Tetra claims it's compatible with AquaSafe.

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