Household Ammonia

[SensesFail]

I'm due a new bottle of waterlife bacterlife soon and was wondering if its worth switching to household ammonia? If I was to do this what dosage of ammonia would you use? Waterlife gives you instructs for their product but I'll be blind without the aids buying household amonia?

Will it be ok switching from one product to another?

Cheers guys

 

[toshapetriji]

I would guess from the name that bacterlife purports to contain bacteria to kick start your filter. Most members here would dispute that claim as a sealed bottle of something sat on a shelf for 6 months without a food source or oxygen is unlikely to survive in any case.

Here at TFF we do suggest that members prepare their filter with a fishless cycle by using ammonia. Essentially the ammonia is a food source for the type of bacteria we want to grow in the filter.

It does take a little time but by doing this you will do no harm to fish.

You will need to dose the tank to 5ppm (parts per million) and you will find a very handy calculator at the top of this forum to enable you to work out how much to add.

Take a look at the sticky at the top of the forum to read more on fishless cycling. There are also many members here on TFF who will guide you through.

Good Luck

 

[11gatorgal11]

I completely agree. Think about it for a second. A bottle claims to have the benefical bacteria that fish need to survive in a tank. The major food source of these bacteria is ammonia. So they take the water from a cycled tank and put it in a bottle. Now when you get to the store you buy the bottle, but who knows how long it's been sitting on that shelf, and what have the bacteria been feeding on if no ammonia is produced within the bottle while sitting on the shelf??? So the bacteria just sit in a bottle with no food source.... I just don't think so!
It's just a very good ploy for people to spend their money. Household ammonia is much cheaper and comes in large bottles. And you won't even use a quarter of the bottle to cycle your tank.
I think you should chuck this waterlife (whatever it is called), and just buy the ammonia.

 

[waterdrop]

There's no problem in switching from what you're currently doing to dosing ammonia. You already have a little start going and the simple ammonia will just keep things going.

The easiest thing we can tell you is that if you are in the UK then Boots ammonia is usually easiest to find, or Homebase. In the USA its Ace Hardware. If you don't have these places and have to resort to more of a search then you are looking for simple aqueous ammonia (it will usually just say "ammonia") that has no dyes, fragrances, surfactants or soaps in it. If you can see it, it should be clear and if you shake it, it should only create bubbles for 2 or 3 seconds, just like water. It should not create foam that stays.

Once you get the right ammonia it will often tell the percentage on the bottle, such as 9.5% or similar. This means you can plug the info in to the web calculator found in our "Calculator" right on the page you are reading. Be aware that ppm and mg/l are the same units for our purposes. Once the calculator tells you the number of milliliters of your concentration of ammonia for your particular volume tank then you'll want to come in a little lower than that, wait 20 min for mixing in the tank and then test to see if the result looks close to 4ppm. If it looks a little light you can plan to bring it up to what the calculator said next time. The important thing is not to dose the ammonia up at 8ppm as this will select for the wrong species of bacteria.

Does all that make sense?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[SensesFail]

There's no problem in switching from what you're currently doing to dosing ammonia. You already have a little start going and the simple ammonia will just keep things going.

The easiest thing we can tell you is that if you are in the UK then Boots ammonia is usually easiest to find, or Homebase. In the USA its Ace Hardware. If you don't have these places and have to resort to more of a search then you are looking for simple aqueous ammonia (it will usually just say "ammonia") that has no dyes, fragrances, surfactants or soaps in it. If you can see it, it should be clear and if you shake it, it should only create bubbles for 2 or 3 seconds, just like water. It should not create foam that stays.

Once you get the right ammonia it will often tell the percentage on the bottle, such as 9.5% or similar. This means you can plug the info in to the web calculator found in our "Calculator" right on the page you are reading. Be aware that ppm and mg/l are the same units for our purposes. Once the calculator tells you the number of milliliters of your concentration of ammonia for your particular volume tank then you'll want to come in a little lower than that, wait 20 min for mixing in the tank and then test to see if the result looks close to 4ppm. If it looks a little light you can plan to bring it up to what the calculator said next time. The important thing is not to dose the ammonia up at 8ppm as this will select for the wrong species of bacteria.

Does all that make sense?

~~waterdrop~~

Yer that's brill iv ordered amonia from boots online and will arrive on Friday. Sadly the stores in my area don't stock it so it's cost 4.50 postage to have it on Friday not to worry. For my tank and the 9.5% which the ammonia is it's around 9mls I have to add. Iv read the post where you add the ammonia on a day to day basis this is what iv been doing with the waterlife biomature. Iv been adding the recommended dose of 6.6ml each day and I now have a nitrite reading of 0.3 after nearly a month of adding it each day. I will test everything tommorow and see what readings I get with ammonia and nitrite.
Once the bottle of ammonia arrives I'll add the recommended dose each day until the nitrite is between 5ppm and 10ppm then stop adding it until the nitrite and ammonia are 0. Then add more ammonia to ensure it is processed within 12hrs? Is this correct? Have I picked up the requirements correctly?

I have also added the following on my other post "cycling nitrite":


I decided to test 3 things just to give you some idea of what the tank is doing. I added biomature at 4pm British time so this is just to give you an idea.


Tank size: 190litre
Temp: 27 celcious
Nitrate: 5mg/L
nitrite: 0.3mg/L
Ammonia: off my scale (very blue in colour) my scale goes to 6.1.

I have been adding 5.5ml of biomature everyday now for around 3-3.5 weeks.

 

[waterdrop]

Interesting, I wonder if that means your ammonia could be as high as 8ppm? We don't want it that high because the wrong species of bacteria takes over. We want our ammonia test to show closer to 4ppm.

Let me make sure we are clear about the ammonia dosing: Once you get the ammonia and have a childs medicine measuring spoon or whatever, you dose close to what the calculator said and test about 20 min later to confirm you get about 4ppm concentration in the tank. Then you wait, sometimes for days or weeks, testing each day. But you only add more ammonia IF the bacteria have processed the ammonia down to zero ppm. Then, on the same hour (out of the 24 that is your regular hour (eg. 7pm or something)) you once again add ammonia. At some point, adding ammonia will indeed be daily, but you only add it based on it getting to zero ppm.

You already have a bit of a start, but be aware that fishless cycling has been known to take a couple of months.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[SensesFail]

Interesting, I wonder if that means your ammonia could be as high as 8ppm? We don't want it that high because the wrong species of bacteria takes over. We want our ammonia test to show closer to 4ppm.

Let me make sure we are clear about the ammonia dosing: Once you get the ammonia and have a childs medicine measuring spoon or whatever, you dose close to what the calculator said and test about 20 min later to confirm you get about 4ppm concentration in the tank. Then you wait, sometimes for days or weeks, testing each day. But you only add more ammonia IF the bacteria have processed the ammonia down to zero ppm. Then, on the same hour (out of the 24 that is your regular hour (eg. 7pm or something)) you once again add ammonia. At some point, adding ammonia will indeed be daily, but you only add it based on it getting to zero ppm.

You already have a bit of a start, but be aware that fishless cycling has been known to take a couple of months.

~~waterdrop~~

With my ammonia being that high is it recommended to stop adding bio mature until the dose drops to 0? Then start adding the new ammonia and doing the first option in the how to section? Add amonia until it reaches 5 then leave till it drops then add? Or do I continue with what the waterlife product said with the new ammonia?

Do I need to do a complete water change? Have not done one to date yet?

 

[Timmy_Bee]

yeah i would let it drop down to 0 before adding more. As WD says, if its too high, it will encourage the wrong type of bacteria to grow

 

[Miss Wiggle]

if the ammonia is too high then do a water change to dilute it rather than just waiting for it to drop