Will Pure Ammonia Bubble?

[notscaredtodance]

For fishless cycling, it says if you aren't sure about ingredients, shake the bottle, and if it suds, don't use it. Well.. I'm pretty sure about the ingredients. They only say ammonium hydroxide. nothing else. And the suds are less than half an inch. And... I've been to 6 stores looking for pure ammonia. It was harder to find than I expected.

Please tell me a little bit of sudsing is normal, and that I can start cycling.


Also, while we're here, for my 30 gallon tank I'd like 2 severum cichlids, 4 corys, and maybe 4 angelfish. I'd rather have 2 or 3 but I know they like to school, and in 3 can make one of them an outcast. If there's room, I'd like the 2 severums, 4 angels, 4 corys, and maybe some other smaller fish like rasboras. Thoughts? Do severum cichlids like to be alone? Is it silly to think of keeping a severum in a 30 gallon?

 

[waterdrop]

When you shake the household ammonia product it should only produce bubbles for 2 or 3 seconds and they should look just like they would if you shook pure water. The description you're giving I'm afraid sounds like added surfactants or soaps are in your ammonia.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[notscaredtodance]

So they didn't label the bottle acurately. Lawsuit, hahaha. I seriously can't find pure ammonia anywhere. Looks like I'm off to get some zebra danios, then.

 

[Katty]

You can also use a (dead) shrimp or prawn (the kind you eat, from the seafood section of the grocery) or fish food as an ammonia source if you still want to try a fishless cycle. With shrimp you can throw it in a tied up nylon stocking, toss it in the tank and not worry about it for a week or so as it starts to decompose and let off ammonia. Then start testing as usual yadda yadda.

Not as precise as using bottled ammonia, but using live fish isn't as precise either.

 

[mata]

depending on your location, if your in the UK your can mail order from Boots the Chemist, they have the right stuff and it was only like £1.80 and came to me in less than 3 days (which is brilliant for where I am, island of north west Scotland)

Ammonia

Och it's out of stock tho

 

[notscaredtodance]

I'm trying to get my cycling done in about 16 days so that I can buy some of my more expensive fish while they're on a 25% off sale. I got the tank and all the equipment for 25% off too, which is why after about 3 months of thinking of a tank I've finally set one up.

Ive heard ACE Hardware has pure ammonia, at 10% dilution, so I'm stopping by there today after class.

I'm in the midwest, by the way.

But I was really surprised how hard it is to find just regular old ammonia.

 

[arobinson1984]

As far as I know ACE ammonia is ok, as is boots household ammonia which can be bought online on the boots website if your local boots stores dont stock it.

It looks like this -> LINK

The reason its hard to find ammonia is because it can be used for bomb making so its illegal to sell PURE ammonia, you can only buy diluted household ammonia like the boots one which is 9.5% ammonia and 90.5% water

Its highly unlikely you'll get the tank cycled in 16 days unless you have someone who can donate some mature media which then may make it possible, without mature media the cycle is more likely to take 6-8 weeks.

On another note, the 30gal tank wont be anywhere near big enough for severums I'm afraid, you need 55gal just for 1 sev. Also depending on the tanks measurements its quite probable that it wont be big enough for angels either. They need a bare minimum of 16" worth of water depth so your tank would have to be at least 19" high.


Andy

 

[karin]

Yes, Ace's Janatorial Strength Ammonia. Watch out the stuff is powerful.

 

[OldMan47]

Unless you have a source of mature media for your filter to give it a jump start, you will not cycle a new filter in 2 weeks no matter how hard you try. I bought my ammonia at Ace too. Be careful to buy the stuff called clear ammonia. If it is called cloudy ammonia, that is another name for ammonia with soap added to it.

 

[notscaredtodance]

Unless you have a source of mature media for your filter to give it a jump start, you will not cycle a new filter in 2 weeks no matter how hard you try. I bought my ammonia at Ace too. Be careful to buy the stuff called clear ammonia. If it is called cloudy ammonia, that is another name for ammonia with soap added to it.

I've got mature media in the tank- a sponge filter and the little bio-cylinders specifically made to hold bacteria. The carbon filter between them is new, though. I've got the aquaclear hob. I also have a mesh bag of gravel from one of the tanks in the store I work at, though I'm not sure the bacteria lasted the 12 hours that the gravel was in the fish bag, with a little bit of water. The oxygen or the ammonia could have been used up in that 12 hours. But I put it in the tank anyway, since it couldn't hurt.

And yeah, this ammonia is the right stuff. After buying two other bottles, haha. Good thing it was cheap.

 

[waterdrop]

This sounds like you are making a good start on a "clone" cycling process. Once you test your way up to 4-5ppm ammonia concentration in the tank, you should then observe a little ammonia drop (downward from the 5ppm) in a day or two if some of your transferred "A-Bacs" (Ammonia oxidizing bacteria) stayed alive through the transfer. You also may experience in that case a little bit of a nitrite(NO2) reading and a small nitrate(NO3) reading that would be a slight increase over whatever your tap water nitrate(NO3) reading is (you should have recorded baseline tap water parameters in your aquarium notebook by now.)

~~waterdrop~~