Yes, agree with Andy, OM47 and the others. There's no dispute that zeolite chemically removes ammonia and ammonium from the water. The problem, especially for our "New to the Hobby" forum, comes in zeolite not being useful on a regular basis for beginners either during cycling or after they have fish. We most often run across it playing an opposite role of being pushed to beginners before they have a correct feel for running either a fishless cycle or for running a tank of fish.
As stated, the problem with zeolite during fishless cycling is that its -too- effective at removing ammonia and will remove the food (ammonia) that drives the fishless cycling process, leaving you in the same ineffective state as you would be if you tried to fishless cycle with less that 2ppm ammonia levels, just not enough for proper colony buildup. This problem is true in fish-in cycling also, as zeolite would clean out the trace amounts of ammonia needed for the slow build-up of biofilter colonies during the periods between water changes. Finally, when running normally with fish, the zeolite not only removes the ammonia down to what is effectively a zero stocking load, thus starving off the bacterial colonies, but as stated, it then adds insult to injury by suddenly reaching capacity and ceasing all ammonia removal. In a heavily stocked tank this could easily result in fish deaths before you realized what was going on.
So, for beginners, this relegates zeolite to the supply shelf, like carbon but really less useful than it, to supposedly be brought down in an emergency. What this beginners section is all about is trying to help beginners to the hobby not have to get in these situations in the first place. For completeness I'll mention that the one area of legitimate usage is with very experienced planted tank enthusiasts: In these cases the hobbyists has usually sunk a small fortune into CO2 equipment, high-tech substrates and lights and fertilization and very large numbers of expensive plants, yet a relatively small stocking load of fish. An even further reduced load of fish can be introduced from the beginning, being offset by the plants, the small ammonia from this stock going to both the plants and, it is hoped, a small bacterial colony startup. Ammonia removers like zeolite are sometimes used in these cases to clean out the ammonia that would trigger algae. But these setups are completely different from the typical beginner setup in that the experienced planted tank operator has confidence that the heavy load of plants will continue to live and perform ammonia removal, even if the zeolite becomes saturated. In beginner tanks, plant death, with its reversal from ammonia absorber to ammonia contributor is even more common than toxin debilitated and dying fish!
While its great for beginners to begin to gain an understanding of how ammonia-removing resins might be used in experienced situations, its even more important for beginners to have a healty respect for the trouble these things are more likely to get them in. Zeolite is yet another shelf item that's all too tempting for LFSs to try and sell just for the sake of selling something, adding to the confusions of meds, carbons and salts they already push off on inexperienced beginners.
~~waterdrop~~
/www.lenntech.com/zeolites-removal.htm
(didn't know any better then) and I too was told not to do water changes for at least a month, to allow for the nitrogen cycle to start/finish, well the LFS that told me that was way off base. The bottom line is this, ammonia can and will, at best, cause harm to you fish, at worst, it will kill them. So you definitely want to remove the ammonia via water changes to protect your fish. The nitrogen cycle will still occur it will just take longer if doing a fish-in cycle. While, scientifically speaking, products like zeolite should help to remove some ammonia, and other ammonia naturalizing agents should help to transform ammonia to ammonium (still harmful to fish), the most effective and safe way to remove ammonia is via a water change. If you have fish in your tank, definitely do water changes (will probably require minimum daily if tank is not cycled) to remove ammonia and help protect your fish.
