Larry Lunsford

From time to time we find ourselves in the unfortunate position of having to treat ammonia in our ponds with chemical neutralizers. Usually these times are also when our Koi have been stressed and are most succeptable to adverse affects of ammonia (such as after dosing the pond with chemicals to treat for some ailment, when putting Koi into a quarantine tank without an established bio-filter, and at Koi shows). To provide the best care for our Koi in these situations, it would be helpful to not only neutralize ammonia but to maintain a little extra neutralizer to be ready to handle ammonia as it is produced by the Koi. This article will show you how to maintain and measure a residual ammonia neutralizing capacity.

When your bio-filter is knocked out or just non-existant you can use chemicals to neutralize ammonia until your bio-filter can recover. You should use enough neutrlizer to not only handle ammonia that is currently in the water, but enough extra to handle what is to come. The simplest way to do this is to just dump in a bunch of neutralizer. However, you don't want to use excessive amounts of neutralizer - its expensive, its never a good idea to use excessive chemicals, and after a few water changes and other things you'll have no idea how much neutralizer is still available. By using AmQuel and salicylate type of ammonia testing kits, you can keep ahead of ammonia without unnecessary overdosing.

I've tried a variety of ammonia neutralizers with a variety of ammonia test kits. The only combination I've found that works well is AmQuel and any salicylate test kit. I don't mean to imply that the other ammonia neutralizers are not good products - I just don't know how to measure ammonia when using these other products. There are two types of commonly available ammonia test kits: Nessler which give color results from clear (no ammonia) to shades of yellow; and salicylate which give color results from yellow (no ammonia) to shades of blue-green. All of the Nessler test kits I've tried don't work with any of the ammonia neutralizers - the neutralizer registers as a large amount of ammonia. All of the salicylate test kits I've tried work well with AmQuel - they only show the amount of ammonia that has not been neutralized.

The method I'll describe is one I've used at several Koi shows. The general idea is to treat with enough AmQuel to keep a little ahead of ammonia production but to not excessively overtreat. You'll need the following: AmQuel, salicylate type ammonia test kit (enough for multiple tests), extra test vials (so you can perform 6 to 12 tests at a time), rack to hold test vials (a board with holes drilled into it is fine), distilled water and an ammonia standard. The ammonia standard is a precisely prepared mix of ammonia and water. The ammonia concentration in the standard is such that adding one drop of the standard to your test vial will increase the ammonia level of the water in the test vial by a specific amount. The ammonia test kits I use have test vials that hold 5ml water samples. The standard I use increases the ammonia in the 5ml sample by 0.5ppm for each drop of standard added. I'll use 5ml sample and 0.5ppm/drop of standard for the rest of this article.

Start by measuring the ammonia currently in your water. Add enough AmQuel to neutralize your existing ammonia plus one days estimated ammonia production plus another 2ppm of ammonia. See table below to extimate ammonia production. This table is a very rough estimate - factors such as temperature and feeding can cause ammonia production to vary significantly. One half ml of AmQuel will neutralize 1ppm ammonia in 1 gal of water. To calculate your AmQuel dose use the formula: ml AmQuel = (gallons of water) * (ppm of ammonia to treat) * 0.5.

The next thing you will need to do is measure your residual ammonia neutralizing capacity. I like to start by preparing my own ammonia color chart - I find it is much easier and more accurate to compare two test vials and decide if one is higher or lower than the other than it is to compare a test vial to a printed chart. Prepare known ammonia samples of 0.0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0ppm ammonia using distilled water and the standard solution. The 0.0 sample is just a vial with 5ml distilled water. The 0.5 sample is 5ml distilled water with 1 drop of standard solution, and so on. This set of tests will help you double check your standard solution and it will let you verify wether your ammonia test kit is working as expected.

Next, measure your current ANC. For this example, assume the following: estimated ammonia production 1ppm per day, 12 hours ago the measured ammonia was 0 and I treated for 3ppm (1 days ammonia production plus 2ppm safety margin). If my original estimate was correct, there should now be an ANC of 2.5ppm (3ppm ANC 12 hours ago - 0.5ppm ammonia produced in 12 hours). I now want to verify that I have an adequate ANC and that my estimated ammonia production is correct. Prepare 5 test vials: label them 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4; put 5ml of pond water into each vial; add ammonia standard to the vials (none to vial 0, 1ppm - 2 drops to vial 1, 2 ppm to vial 2 and so on). Test the ammonia level in each vial - using your salicylate ammonia test, check each sample against your reference test. Determine the ANC: the ANC is the amount of ammoina added minus the test result. Lets assume that our test came out as shown in the table below.

If you've made this far, you may be saying to yourself "Wow, that's a lot of fiddling around - is all of it really necessary?" For checking water at Koi shows, the procedures above are exactly the procedures I use. If you have enough test vials, a vial rack, and use a liquid ammonia test kit, then the testing isn't really all that difficult or time consuming. Once you've done the procedure a couple of times and you have a better idea of how your pond or quarantine tank is behaving, you can narrow the range of tests you need to perform. Even if the Koi you have now don't seem worth all the trouble of performing lots of tests, you should still give this procedure a try. This way you'll be all the more prepared when you find that worderful, must have, Koi (at a price that just yesterday you thought only a crazy person would pay) and can't resist bringing it home to your pond.

Koi