Fishless Cycle And Ammonia

[Marclau]

O'K

After loosing my tank about a week ago to Septicemia, I have cleaned the tank out several times and undergoing a fishless cycle all over again.
I purchased a new heater also as the last one was coroding from the initial ammonia wash.........(i added a litre) to my 270 litre tank!!!

I then rinsed it 3 times before doing a wash with Oxy Clean (Chlorine) and then again washing out the tank twice before doing another huge gravel vac.
Unfortunately I wasnt going to take out the gravel of 80 kilos........so decided to wash it inside the tank.

I also stripped my canister (Fluval 305) and washed it and also the sponges and noodles and left out to completely dry for 3 days........

Thing is, I have now added the new heater and only realised that I just added a small amount of ammonia.....this time only approx 60ml........

Will this amount have an affect on my new heater...........the ammonia I added here in Australia is called Cloudy Ammonia.....

To date I have only had reading of PH of 7 and Ammonia of .50 so as per the thread on Fishless Cycle, I need to increase my ammonia levels.
Is it perhaps best to take the heater out in that case? ALthough it would significantly drop my water temp which is sitting at 24 degrees celsius.

 

[Dave125]

You should be just fine with that level of ammonia.

 

[Marclau]

Thanks Dave125,

I hope so.........heater cost me around $25 quid ($60 Aust)......dont want to loose this one........

 

[LauraFrog]

What sort of cloudy ammonia are you using? Not all of them are suitable for cycling. If it's got pearly stuff swirling in it, it's full of soap and you're going to have problems putting the fish in the tank afterwards. The stuff from IGA is perfect because Black and Gold are too scungy to put surfactants in it, so you can tip it in the tank.

I have never heard of any aquarium equipment that won't tolerate 5ppm of ammonia which is the recommended level for a fishless cycle. At least, I've never heard of any equipment failures being attributed to this much ammonia - it really isn't that much, I would drink water containing 5ppm. Fish are extremely sensitive to it. Metal isn't.

 

[Marclau]

Thanks Laura,

Yes it does look a bit swirly in the bottle.........its just the cheap brand from Coles Smart Buy and says ingredients is only 41.2 g/l Ammonia (as NH4OH).
There is no mention of soaps or anything..........

What should I do then??

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, its certainly tricky finding the right stuff, especially in Australia I hear. This is one of our most difficult things on the forum, helping people find the right stuff! You're looking for pure aqueous ammonia (which means mostly pure water with just some percentage of pure ammonia in it, often its found at about 5 to 10% ammonia) and its a fairly widespread phenomenon that pure household ammonia sold as a cleaning supply will be the right stuff. Unfortunately, just as often, other stuff that's totally wrong for our purposes is added and rarely is it listed, if indeed, anything is accurately listed at all!

The things most often added are surfactants/soaps, dyes and fragrances. Dyes and fragrances and often be observed visually or smelled (be very careful about this, start at a distance, seriously!) Surfactants/soaps we often recomnend finding by shaking and observing the bubbles. Pure ammonia without any soap should allow the bubbles to die out within 2 or 3 seconds after shaking, just like water. If soap is present the bubbles will usually persist much longer.

In the U.S. and U.K., the finding of a good ammonia product has been helped along by people passing around brand names after they've had success. To me, on our forum, the stories from Australia seem "all over the place." There are even a fair number of stories of folks down under having to find school or government labs or something like that in a small business sometimes where someone has "made up" some ammnonia solutiion or can do it. Its one of those things where persistence seems to eventually pay off!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Miss Wiggle]

try shaking it up vigorously, does it foam up or just produce a few air bubbles like if you'd shaken up a bottle of water?