City Water Causing Ammonia!

[Aquakeeper]

I have had my tanks setup now for a while. My 75 has been running for a little over 6 months. My 20L for about 5 months and my latest 15 has been running for about 3 months.

Now to my problem...Everytime I test for ammonia is shows up as 0.5 ammonia. So I thought my tank was never going to cycle even though all the other parameters were ok, the ammonia would never go down even with water changes. I recently tested my water straight from the tap using a freshwater test kit and waalaa....0.5 ammonia in my tap!?

Is this a common thing with city water, what is causing ammonia to come straight from my tap water?

Next question....Is there any products out there to remove that ammonia. Like I see ammonia remover and such for freshwater tanks but not sure if there are ones that will work for saltwater! I really don't want to have to go the RO route since they are fairly expensive and since I am paying for water its going to make my bill go up since I will be waisting 1/3 of the water coming out as pure water.

Any ideas?

[Boomer]

Is this a common thing with city water, what is causing ammonia to come straight from my tap water?

Yes, it is, you can get all you need from here. It comes from the break down of Chloramines, which is molecule composed of ammonia and chlorine.

Chloramine
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-11/rhf/feature/index.htm

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Thanks Boomer.

As Boomer mentions, tap water often has chloramine, and the best way to remove it is by an RO/DI system (as discussed int he article). RO alone does not do it. When my DI resin recently ran out, the water coming out clearly smelled of ammonia. You can use a chemical treatment, as also discussed in the article.

However, I am not a fan of using tap water as you cannot know if it is suitable or not, until there is a problem. I discuss the issues with tap water in this article:

Tap Water in Reef Aquaria
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/jan2004/chem.htm