Will non-pure ammonia filter out?

[cdoc83]

Hey all, I've been wanting to keep fish for years. I've unsuccessfully tried several times. At first I didn't know about the nitrogen cycle, but I get it now. I recently bought a Tetra 20 gallon tank kit (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013BXDZ90/?tag=ff0d01-20) and my wife picked up some ammonia from the store to initiate a fish-less cycle. There was no label indicating any other ingredients so I thought I was good to go. After a couple of weeks of adding ammonia every day, I started getting a bit discouraged. The water was super cloudy, and the ammonia wasn't going up (maxed out around 1ppm), but I also was never seeing any sign of nitrites. I finally looked up the MSDS sheet on the ammonia, and it turns out it was only 1-3% ammonia and had other stuff in it. After some googling, I found some instruction which said to shake the ammonia bottle, if it bubbles, it has other cleaners in it. Sure enough, a couple of shakes and my bottle is full of bubbles.

I really don't want to start over.... I live on a well which has extremely high nitrates (200ppm+), so I can't use it to fill my tank, which means I have to buy water. Will activated carbon cartridges eventually filter out the other chemicals??

PS - It was Simply Done branded ammonia. I have ordered Dr. Tim's ammonia for aquariums and have done two 25% water changes. The water is completely clear now.
PPS - During the cycle, should the activated carbon be in the filter, or not? It seems like it should not be, but wanted to make sure.
PPPS - The ingredients of the ammonia are: Water, Ammonium Hydroxide, Tetrasodium EDTA, Sodium C10-16 Alkylbenzensulfonate, and Sodium Xylene Sulphonate.

 

[Essjay]

Alkylbenzene sulphonates are anionic surfactants - a type of detergent used in clothes washing products
Sodium xylene sulphonate is a wetting agent, commonly used in shampoos etc
Tetrasodium EDTA is a chelating agent. It is the chemical used in aquarium water conditioners to bind metals.

Ideally you should do a 100% water change to remove the detergent and wetting agent as both will affect fish if there is any left in the water.
You could get some of this http://www.arcadia-aquatic.com/product/poly-filter/ and run a few batches before adding the Dr Tim's ammonia; it is supposed to remove a whole lot of things from water and won't do any harm. Maybe run Poly-Filter and carbon as a belt and braces approach.
Poly-Filter is expensive stuff, but cheaper than buying a lot of water.

You don't need to use carbon in the filter routinely. Once you've managed to get the bad stuff out of the tank, throw it away. If the filter came with carbon, replace it with sponge.





When you start the cycle again, the best method to follow is this one, if you haven't already found it https://www.fishforums.net/threads/cycling-your-new-fresh-water-tank-read-this-first.421488/

the ammonia wasn't going up (maxed out around 1ppm)

Ammonia doesn't increase during cycling but I suspect that may have been a typo

 

[cdoc83]

Ok, thank you! It sounds like activated carbon won't filter it out then?

The ammonia bit: I was adding ammonia every day but it wasn't increasing the PPM when I tested it. Thought that was odd...

 

[Essjay]

It does sound odd, though with all those chemicals in the water.....

Carbon may remove some of the chemicals or it may not. Using both carbon and Poly-Filter is the best thing I can think of.


I forgot to mention that the ammonium hydroxide in the list of ingredients is what ammonia forms when it dissolves in water.

You'll see in the link that you need to add ammonia to get 3 ppm. Dr Tim's is actually ammonium chloride, which is just as good a source of ammonia as ammonium hydroxide. But you can't use the ammonia calculator in the Calculator section of the forum. The Dr Tim's instructions say to use 4 drop per gallon of tank water but don't say what ammonia level that gives. I suggest using that dosage, wait half an hour for it to mix in thoroughly, then test. If it's 3 ppm, good. If it's less than 3 ppm add more. If you count the drops you'll know how many it takes to get whatever the reading is so you should be able to work out how many more drops will get it to 3 ppm.
Then when you add the 1 ppm snack dose, you'll know how many drops = 3 ppm so the 1 ppm dose will be easy to work out.

 

[cdoc83]

Fantastic, I'll follow your instructions! I'm excited to get this figured out.