Eek! Help! Think I've Done Something Stupid!

[OldMan47]

If you walk into a store and tell them that you need ammonia for cycling a fish tank they will give you an odd look and tell you they don't have any. If you go to the cleaning supplies aisle and have a look, many of them will have it. Ammonia smells very bad but is a great grease cutting cleaning aid and is probably available in each of the stores that you visited. Until recently, ammonia was the main ingredient in window cleaners although these days it seems to be largely alcohol.

 

[waterdrop]

Yup! Agree with all this. Finding ammonia is one of the many fun little adventures of fishless cycling In each store it can be good to try -both- appoaches, stalking the isles where mops and brooms and cleaning things are and looking carefully and also asking humans, but being skeptical if the tell you they don't have it. We all have stories of how we found ours and we'll be interested to hear yours!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[gaz gun man]

Homebase have definately sold it before, as thats where I got mine.

Unless the employee just meant that specific branch.

 

[Angel47]

Well, I just nipped out at lunch to look for my ammonia. Already tried B&Q and Homebase ("Oh no, we don't stock that"....mumble, mumble, "poisons list" mumble, mumble), LLoyds the Chemist ("Definitely not"). I actually dont believe any of the above as my experience of sales staff in general is that they haven't a clue what they sell, but I didn't have time to trapse around the whole of the shop(s).

Anyway, I just nipped into a little old fashioned hardware shop, you know the kind, they always smell of bike oil and shoe polish and voila! They had some Jeyes Kleen-Off behind the counter. Big 500ml bottle for £2.25. They dont keep it on the shelves anymore because unfortunately its being used as drugs. .


Now all I've got to hope is that my local 'Animals that reside with You' store has a master test kit in stock then I can get down to business

Hurrah!

Maz

 

[waterdrop]

Great! Congrats! Yes, in hindsight, the beginners here sometimes say they should have got ammonia and a master test kit before they even picked out a tank, lol!

You'll never know it but what you're getting ready to do, the ammonia based fishless cycle, is a thousand times easier to understand the feedback of than it would be with the prawns in a sack! Those would have randomly rotted and been changed into ammonia by heterotrophic bacteria and the amount of ammonia would have been high and low, back and forth in amounts you never would have been sure how you could control.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Angel47]

Yes, we live and learn. The prawns seemed like (somebody elses) good idea at the time. lol. They were good prawns too. 'Taste the Difference' king prawns, yum. Oh well, dont think I'll bother with them now!!

I will hopefully get my testing kit on the way home from work then see what my ammonia reading is. I wont change the water as Curiosity101 said not to worry about that, then I shall post again if thats ok?

Thanks all,

Maz

 

[Bobtastic]

Ironically I went into Homebase yesterday and bought some "Household Ammonia" 500ml for £1.99. So they do stock it in certain stores. Makes me wonder if it's staff not actually knowing that they sell it.

The fella I spoke to said they didnt have any but then thought for a second and said that he would check. I followed him and there it was next to the Caustic Soda. I was reasonably impressed cos he knew exactly where it wasn't gonna be.

 

[Angel47]

Makes me wonder if it's staff not actually knowing that they sell it.

I'm absolutely sure its that. I went into Wilkinsons the other day to buy sticky velcro and was told they didnt do any and if they did (bit of a contradiction) it would be with the shoe polish!!?? I walked around the corner and found it with curtain stuff. Very odd.

I was reasonably impressed cos he knew exactly where it wasn't gonna be.

Brilliant!

Anyway, here we go folks. My prawns are well and truly cooked and I've removed them from tank, my tank smells and is cloudy and i've spent half my fish money on an API master testing kit, so its all good really!

My results are as follows:

Ammonia 4.0 Nitrite 0.5 Nitrate 20. My temp is set at 30c for now.

Please help me with my next step!

Thanks a lot! Maz

 

[waterdrop]

Pretty simple Maz, you're gonna test ammonia and pH maybe once a day for now and just see if ammonia starts to drop from that 4 level and make sure pH doesn't head downward too fast. Post up your daily results somewhere here in your thread and of course be recording them in your aquarium notebook.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Angel47]

Would you like a PH reading or does it not matter at the moment?
So I dont do anything at all now, no water change nothing, and just test tomorrow.
How long do you think the water will be cloudy for and will the smell stop soon too?
Have the prawns done any good at all, only I would rather change the water so it doesnt smell unless there is an advantage to it being as it is?



Thanks Waterdrop!

 

[waterdrop]

Would you like a PH reading or does it not matter at the moment?
So I dont do anything at all now, no water change nothing, and just test tomorrow.
How long do you think the water will be cloudy for and will the smell stop soon too?
Have the prawns done any good at all, only I would rather change the water so it doesnt smell unless there is an advantage to it being as it is?



Thanks Waterdrop!

As long as pH is above 6.2 we really don't care much and can talk about that later (cycling process itself can drive pH down and cause a stall-out.)

Nope, no water change, no ammonia addition yet, just test once a day and see when the ammonia goes down. When it gets to zero we'll add more ammonia to bring it back up to 5ppm or so.

Don't worry about cloudiness, totally normal and harmless in new tanks and will go away. Its a bacterial bloom of a different type of bacteria that are not the ones we care about.

The prawns are not at all bad and will have helped and the smell will probably go away before the cycling is over.

Good luck, you're off to a good start there.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Angel47]

Thanks, I hope so but I do hope it clears some by the Friday. My daughter is coming to stay and I dont see her very often. She paid for the tank and everything to go with it (along with my husband - its a birthday present) and I would like her to see it clean and lovely the way it was. I could kick myself.

I will post tomorrow with my new results.

Maz

 

[Tropical_Fish]

If it helps I managed to get some Amonnia today, went to the big homebase a few miles away, I took a while to find the cleaning products but when I did it was right there on the top shelf £1.99 for 500ml.

 

[Angel47]

Hi everyone!

Here are my stats for today (I will write them but they are actually just the same as yesterday), any comments / advice would be appreciated:

Day 2

Ammonia 4.0

Nitrite 0.5

Nitrate 20

PH 7.6

Temp still set at 30c

Also tested my tap water:

Ammonia 0

PH 7.2

Thank you!! Maz

 

[Angel47]

'Bump' sorry, just need to know if I'm supposed to do anything now

Thanks Maz