Water Test

[Miss Wiggle]

long term no - when you do your weekly water change the filter will have the little extra blip of ammonia sucked up and processed within an hour or so, you may find it's advisable to do smaller but more regular water changes, like 15% twice a week instead of 30% once a week. But really it won't make any tangible difference.

short term, yes the ammonia is likely to damage your fish, but there's nothing else you can do now. This is why we always tell people to fishless cycle wherever possible but sometimes for whatever reason they end up fish-in cycling. If this is the case then all we can do is damage mitigation to try and keep things as good as is possible and reduce the chances of any ammonia or nitrite damage. However it's not possible to completely eliminate the risk in this case, if it was then there would be no need for a fishless cycle at all we'd just all do this magic cure that got rid of the ammonia!!

 

[petertr]

Just to re-iterate - if you're worried about the ammonia in the tap water, you can use Ammo-Lock as your dechlor.

 

[Bojangles]

Took a sample down to my lfs today he did the test and says my water is perfect but to me the ammonia test's are still coming out a light green so might have to try another place to be on safe side

Going to pick up some ammo-lock tomorrow as my dechlorinator

EDIT

Can a Pond dechlorinator be used in a tank set up?

 

[Schmill]

Most people on here would say no to ammo-lock I believe, and YES to pond dechlor

 

[waterdrop]

Most people on here would say no to ammo-lock I believe, and YES to pond dechlor

Yes, Schmill is correct, this is the collective final outcome of long, long discussions about this stuff.

Using the term "Ammo-Lock" is tricky because there are at least two very different products by that name, different on the two sides of the ocean too!

I believe you have one in UK that's liquid and is trying to do a couple of the functions of Seachem Prime, if I'm not mistaken.

The other one over here in USA is little white grannules and is a very bad habit to get into with an aquarium, if I recall.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yes, i think there's one product called 'ammo lock' and one called 'ammo-lock' which obviously makes things very confusing, we only just realised this a few months ago and we'd all been talking at cross purposes thinking we were referring to the same product when we weren't!

the one that's little white granules is bad news, it sucks up the ammonia totally which means nothing gets through to the filter bacteria, they will then die off (or not grow in the first place in a new tank) and as such the tank never cycles. The crystals at some point become saturated and then ammonia starts to build up and throws the tank into a cycle again but often without the person realising that it's cycling and if you only cotton on too late you can do permanent damage to your fish.

the one that's liquid is actually fine, it converts ammonia into ammonium which is less toxic to fish but can still be used by the filter bacteria so the tank cycles and it's just a bit less dangerous to fish.

 

[Corleone]

The liquid available in the US (Well, API's anyway - there's two other brands of liquid ammolock at my LFS I'm not familiar with) contains a chemical with a very long name which somebody has posted several times. It doesn't convert ammonia to ammonium, it converts it to an entirely different, innert substance. It botches some ammonia test kits, but it isn't utilized by nitrifying bacteria.

 

[petertr]

This is the Ammo Lock I've used for 3 years. Has never had any adverse affect on my tanks. Never caused any affect on my cycle.

[URL="http/www.aquatics-direct.co.uk/productDe...p?productID=617"]http/www.aquatics-direct.co.uk/productDe...p?productID=617[/URL]
[URL="http/www.hobbyfish.net/index.php?prodID=317163030455"]http/www.hobbyfish.net/index.php?prodID=317163030455[/URL]


As for the question on Pon Dechlor - there have been many posts on here lately that have said "yes" you can use it.

 

[Bojangles]

This is the stuff i was going to get but he was waiting on his stock coming in so did not get any

http/www.animalsource.co.uk/king-british...water-529-p.asp

Anyone used it before?

Will probs order some pond dechlor from ebay

 

[Corleone]

From the description, bottled bacteria product. Unreliable at best, snake oil at worst.

It doesn't name any of the bacteria in it, but it does name one of them by shape, which means nothing - "bacillus" could mean something you want in the tank, it could mean strep.

Marine and freshwater tanks have different bacteria, as well. The fact that it claims to establish a biofilter in both makes me give it a pass.