# ADA Amazonia Type I



## splur (May 11, 2011)

Alright, so before I bought type II and it worked great. Like everyone said, it made the water cloudy at first, then settled and the pH slowly went down and ammonia spiked.

I bought the older type I recently and it doesn't seem to be doing any of that. Mind you I used a lot more tap water than I did the other tank, the water parameters seem to be a pH of 8.0 and there is no ammonia in sight. The water also turned brownish. I know there are differences between type I and type II, where they fixed some of these problems in type II especially the cloudiness, but it's doing nothing to the pH. Mind you this is after a week of the substrate being in the tank. Is there a chance I got hit by a fake bag? I checked everything mentioned here (http://bhushandalvi.wordpress.com/2008/09/21/counterfeit-ada-aquasoil-amazonia/) and there are none of these mistakes.


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## arc (Mar 11, 2010)

The chance if it being a fake bag is possible but its seems more likely that the tap water you are using is too hard for it to buffer well(high kh). If you bought this used or using a small amount then this problem is even worse. Head over to http://www.aquajournal.net/na/notes/001/index.html for some information on the difference of ada soils. If you add enough soil or drop the kh down with enough RO water you should be able to lower the ph.


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## splur (May 11, 2011)

Hm, I'd understand that it wouldn't lower pH if the water is too hard, but the fact that it isn't leaching out any ammonia at all? I'd imagine if it was super active due to the hard water, it would leach out even more ammonia.


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## arc (Mar 11, 2010)

I'm unsure why you are not getting a ammonia reading but the release of the ammonia should not be affected by the water hardness. You can try using a cup with half of it soil and the other half with water to test. Using multiply cups with various soil to water(try RO as well) ratios will give you a good picture of whats going on.


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## CrystalMethShrimp (Apr 27, 2010)

The new ADA doesn't leech amonia.
But to my understanding you should always use R/O water with it.
Toronto tap is pretty hard. You should have about 2 inches of soil.


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## splur (May 11, 2011)

For my new tank I used 50% R/O water 50% filtered tap water. Surprising the filtered water turned tap water at 8 pH/9 GH/8 KH/170 TDS to 6.5 pH/5 GH/1 KH/ 90 TDS. I don't understand what Brita has, if whatever it is doing is fooling the API drop tests, but it seems to spit out water with decent parameters.

I'm slightly disappointed the new ADA doesn't leech ammonia, I was hoping my plants could go through a growth spurt. I only top-up and do W/C with remineralized RO water so I only have 1 inch of substrate.

The ADA I was complaining about is the old type I, which when I went to Aqua Inspiration (not the store I bought this bag from) they said that type I is actually a lot better for tanks but leach out tannins which turn the water yellow. So my soil seems to be doing just that, but for some reason it wasn't leaching out ammonia nor was it lowering the pH, even for pure RO water. Although now I think I did the exact opposite and put in water with no buffering capacity or ions, so the drop test might be giving me a weird reading once again.


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## splur (May 11, 2011)

Stuff finally did it stuff, the tap water was too hard to buffer. Drawback is that it turned the water yellowish tan, kind of like what the indian almond leaves do to the water. Guy at AI said that the old ADA does that and it's actually good for planted tanks as it is releasing nutrients... he even said that the new ADA kind of sucks because it is TOO clear. I think I like clear water better than that "el natural" look, I guess I'm buying a bag of the new amazonia.


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