Ammonia Not Appering

[b0b95]

I dosed the proper amount of ammonia, into my new tank, with one of m established filters, and none showed up. I added some more and stille none showed up. 12 hours later none is there, but a tiny bit of nitrites and nitrates. I tried testing with my API test kit, and my ammonia strips.

 

[waterdrop]

Try filling your test tube mostly with tap water and then putting in a drop of your household ammonia solution directly in the test tube - does that give you a huge ammonia reading?

 

[b0b95]

yes it does. i tried that already. its way off the charts.

 

[waterdrop]

OK then, you could also step your test up a notch. I found that dosing a measured two-gallons (US gallons) in a bucket was helpful. Ideally using a milliliter syringe or whatever small measurement device you have or by using drops and counting. This can help establish the degree to which your actual household ammonia might behave differently than the calculator is making you think it should.

Are you going by an ammonia percentage marked on the ammonia bottle? Sometimes they are just off from reality.

Perhaps the ammonia being dosed to the new tank is just getting absorbed by something? Do you have anything more than a bare tank? What were your media choices in the new filter?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[b0b95]

it didnt say the perecen of ammonia so i assumed 9.5%

 

[waterdrop]

Yeah, the actual ammonia percentages can be all over the place, although usually lower than 10% in nearly all cases. WD

 

[b0b95]

i dumped a crap load of that stuff in, and whalla! Its about 5 ppm

 

[waterdrop]

But of course you'll need to know the amount that did it as this becomes your "dose," the thing you repeat on your "add-hour" out of the 24 hours when you need to re-dose. Ammonia is re-dosed (at the add-hour) if it went to zero ppm anytime within the previous 24 hours.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[b0b95]

yeah, at least i know a base amount. I will not dose as much next time, because i already have a mature filter. i will jsut keep it a 2.0 for the next week, then get fish.

 

[b0b95]

ammonia down to .2 from .5 in 5 hours.

 

[waterdrop]

You can switch to a fish-in cycle after a week but its generally much more work still. You have to test twice a day and your fish risk permanent damage if you are unable to pull that off every time. Then the main work is that you have to perform large and frequent water changes with good technique in order to keep both the ammonia and nitrite(NO2) within the quite narrow band of zero ppm to 0.25ppm.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[b0b95]

well the filter is doing its job cause its mature, and i can just add some gravel, if i accidently get to many fish.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, the fact that once you were finally able to get enough of that weak ammonia in there to get the tank concentration up to 5ppm and then it dropped to zero ppm in 12 hours, means that half of the biofiltration is working properly. The nitrite processing half is also nearly there, just showing a trace of nitrite 12 hours later, right?

So once the nitrite drops completely to zero ppm within 12 hours after the next dosing of 5ppm of ammonia, you will have started your qualification week. The test we have for whether the mini-cycling is going to come back on you is to watch it perform for the better part of a week, usually the week during which you are figuring out which fish you are going to add and whether they will be available on the weekend coming up.

This is a good test because sometimes it will surprise you and you'll get a spike in one of the poisons or the other, something you would not want once you get fish.

~~waterdrop~~