BigBadBadger

Not a problem, I had assumed that you were using de-chlorinator but it does pay to check..... I would suggest that the Prime 'should' be detoxifying the ammonia (at least for a period of time) and accordingly not surprising that you are getting ammonia readings on the test kit as the ammonia is still there but should not harm the fish (again if the Prime is doing what it says it should). Possibly just need some more time to build up your beneficial bacteria to combat this in the medium term but in the shorter term stick with the Prime (you can up the dose in really base cases of ammonia or nitrite spikes etc). How old is the tank and has it been fully cycled? Stick with the discus they are a great fish! IMO - they are much easier to keep than the myths might say (they are so domesticated now they are pretty well adapted to a range of water conditions, within reason => obviously your ammonia issue will be a problem long term). In fact of the 2 species I keep discus and guppies I find I lose more guppies, interestingly I surmise this might because they are so inbred now the hardiness from the wild strains is long gone.....

Its not clear from above whether you using any tap water de-chlorination treatments when doing the water changes? My suggestion would be to dose the tap water with Seachem Prime (or it's powdered form, Safe) went doing your water changes from the tap. As well as dealing with Chlorine and Chloramines it also detoxifies ammonia. Whilst Prime is expensive I've found this works well for me, I keep 4 discus tanks pretty heavily stocked and do 90% water changes on all of them at least twice a week straight from the tap, using Prime. I understand that if there are Chloramines added by your regional council to it's water then in neutralising the Chlorine component, ammonia is actually produced noting Prime detoxifies this BUT I suspect it may well still show up on standard test kits albeit it should be 'safe'.

Hi Ryan I have some I could give you if you've not gone the TM route yet, PM and we can sort something out.