Best way to treat for ammonia

[Andra2000]

Last night I tested my water and found I had an ammonia issue. I did a 50% water change and added some prime. I also bought some ammonia chips and bulk carbon which I added to a media bag and put that in my FilStar Canister XP filter. The girl at the LFS said that should help with the ammonia

How often should I be doing a large water change.. daily .. few times a week ?

I need some advice to get this corrected. The water in my area has a normal hard pH so I don't know if I can ever get a better reading for that. I didn't test the water since I did the big water change and I'm worried I'm doing something wrong.

Any advice to get rid of the ammonia would be great.

The fish are all doing well and swimming about. They don't seem to be stressed because of it but I need to do whatever I can to get the water back to better parameters.

Thanks for any suggestions. I have the API ammonia test.. comes with two bottles and a test tube. I don't know how accurate it is and wondered if there is something better to test for ammonia?

 

[Lotus]

The bottle test kits are usually fairly good. How high was the ammonia?

If you do have an ammonia reading, you'll need to keep checking and doing water changes to keep the levels low.