Amonia problems

[HaZRaTTy]

I remember seeing a post and something about litter boxes and tanks sometime ago on canreef maybe do a quick search.. I can't remember what it was about though.

[Cal_stir]

I work with ammonia and the human nose can smell it when concentrations cannot be detected with a ppm meter. Ammonia is readily adsorbed by water but I do not think it has an affinity with water as salt does so unless your litter box is right beside your storage container I would be skeptical that it is the cause, nitrates are a whole other animal that are not exported easily with conventional means and I hear of tanks with high nitrates that don't have a hair algae problem, I think po4 starts HA and then no3 can feed it, high nitrates need to be reduced with denitrators or WC's and then can be managed with pellet reactors and other forms of carbon dosing.

[makana]

I can appreciate the complexity of of the hair algea problem and nitrate problem. But if I am doing water changes with amonia levels between 1 and 4 mg/L then the end result of that amonia is going to be nitrates. Essentially my bioload is overloaded without adding fish.

For what it is worth I don't smell amonia on the top floor of the house and after 24 hours a cup of ro/di water tests at 1. If its not coming from the litter box then where else would it be coming from?

I guess all that really matters is how can I stop the amonia from getting into my water change water? The garage is the only spot I have found where uncovered water does not increase in amonia but it is going to be too cold.

[makana]

Is there an air purifier that removes ammonia? I am also wondering about the skimmer intake sucking ammonia into the aquarium. I was thinking about routing the intake line to pull in outside air but am wondering if that would have an impact on the temperature of the tank. Although that might actually mean my chiller won't have to run as often.

[Cal_stir]

I don't know of purifiers other than the cartridges for a respirator but I think carbon should work, I you draw your skimmer air through some carbon in a simple reactor per say.

[makana]

I don't know if the skimmer would bring in enough ammonia to make it worth worrying about but it would be interesting to see if I could filter it if I would see a difference. Nitrates are somwhere between 0 and 5 so not too high but I only have two small fish. Maybe I'll see if I can find a way to keep ammonia out of the water change and top off water first.

Would GAC work dry? I read about a using a diy box with media that pulled air through media to remove CO2 for the skimmer. I'm wondering if something like that would work but not sure if carbon works dry.