How Much Amonia...

[Squid]

Ive seen all the messages on fishless cycling, and will be starting my first one on a couple of weeks. Now, i know you need 4-5 ppm in the tank, but to save time with millions of tests until i get it right, could someone who has cycled a 180 litre tank tell me roughly how much amonia you had to add in order to get this level correct..?

Many thanks
Squid

 

[rdd1952]

Ammonia varies in strength and concentration so it's hard to say how much you need. The best way to figure out what to add is to take a 5 gallon bucket, add say 5 drops, swirl the water around good to make sure it is mixed and test. If the reading is 2 ppm, you then can calculate that you need 10 drops (2 x 5) per 5 gallon to raise the level to 4 ppm. You may have to test a couple times but it's much easier to do it this way that by adding to the tank and testing. You don't run the risk of adding too much to start. ALso much easier to make sure it is well mixed in the bucket since you can do it with your hand rather than waiting on the filter to circulate it.

 

[Squid]

Ammonia varies in strength and concentration so it's hard to say how much you need. The best way to figure out what to add is to take a 5 gallon bucket, add say 5 drops, swirl the water around good to make sure it is mixed and test. If the reading is 2 ppm, you then can calculate that you need 10 drops (2 x 5) per 5 gallon to raise the level to 4 ppm. You may have to test a couple times but it's much easier to do it this way that by adding to the tank and testing. You don't run the risk of adding too much to start. ALso much easier to make sure it is well mixed in the bucket since you can do it with your hand rather than waiting on the filter to circulate it.

Top tip... thanks

 

[Squid]

found some ammonia in homebase.. says its a 9.5% solution.. is that about the norm.. or is this a heavily diluted bottle of it.?

Cheers
Squid

 

[rdd1952]

I'm not really sure. The bottle I have doesn't have anything on it so I don't know what the strength is. Maybe someone else can answer.

 

[kris-b-]

I have the bottle from homebase too. I thought that the household cleaning stuff should have between 0-10% ammonia within it, so i think this is fairly strong, but I'm not totally sure!

I really think you should follow the first reply from rdd as no one can tell you how many drops to add as what you are using as a dropper could create bigger or smaller drops than what someone else has used

If you have a 180 litre tank try testing it out on a 20 litre bucket and times the amount of drops it took to get it to the right ppm by 9!

Hope it goes well, good luck

 

[Squid]

i will be following that advice.. its just that people have been talking about pure ammonia, so i was curious as to whether this was even the right thing to get..

Thanks for your help...

Squid

 

[kris-b-]

Pure ammonia would be too toxic even for household use so the stuff that is sold is ammonia which has been diluted with water, so it's 90 odd percent water and a small amount of ammonia (it still stinks though ).

The reason people say pure ammonia is because of the household ammonia products on sale which contain fragrances, soaps and other chemicals that you shouldn't really use in your tank. So people on here don't call them pure ammonia.

I ended up buying 2 other types before I got to the Homebase version as you cant usually look in the bottles to shake it and see if it foams up but the Homebase one is deffinately ok!

I'm now on day 3 of cycling a small tank and it's now gone a little bit cloudy like a milky but nothing too bad! Ammonia hasn't dropped at all yet but I dnt really expect it to yet! I just don't like waiting

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

 

[modernhamlet]

9.5% is pretty high for ammonia. Start off small, you can always add more.

Oh, and whatever you do, DON'T put your nose over the open bottle and breath in. Just about knocked myself out doing that once on 10% ammonia. Potent stuff.

 

[kris-b-]

I did that in the shop when I picked up the same on squid has to see if it foamed up, I opened it up and didn't realise how bad it was! Lethal!

 

[Squid]

thanks guys..

looks like that should do the trick then... just want to do it right first time, thats all..

Squid

 

[rdd1952]

its just that people have been talking about pure ammonia, so i was curious as to whether this was even the right thing to get..

You're right and that is actually inaccurate. As kris-b- said, what people really mean by "pure ammonia" is that it doesn't contain any detergent, fragrances, surfactants, etc. What everyone uses definitely isn't true pure ammonia. I wouldn't want to be in the same room when a bottle of true "pure ammonia" was opened up. Talk about clearing out your sinuses.

 

[Squid]

its just that people have been talking about pure ammonia, so i was curious as to whether this was even the right thing to get..

You're right and that is actually inaccurate. As kris-b- said, what people really mean by "pure ammonia" is that it doesn't contain any detergent, fragrances, surfactants, etc. What everyone uses definitely isn't true pure ammonia. I wouldn't want to be in the same room when a bottle of true "pure ammonia" was opened up. Talk about clearing out your sinuses.

lol

squid

 

[rowdyates]

Hi Squid,

I used the Homebase stuff when I cycled my 180, I ended up adding @ 5ml every other day to keep the level up, I started off using an eye dropper when I got to about 150 drops I reread the instructions on cycling as I thought I was doing it wrong, but I just miscalculated. So when I checked again it worked out at 5ml.

Cheers,

Keith

 

[rdd1952]

I used the Homebase stuff when I cycled my 180, I ended up adding @ 5ml every other day to keep the level up, I started off using an eye dropper when I got to about 150 drops I reread the instructions on cycling as I thought I was doing it wrong, but I just miscalculated. So when I checked again it worked out at 5ml.

I actually calculated the number of drops it took to make 1ml so I would know how much to dose the ferts on my small tanks. I just too a test tube and a dropper and added drops to the tube until I had 1ml in it. Then I knew that I needed something like 6 drops for my 2.5 gallon tanks.