Filling With Hose Pipe And Treating With Prime

[Spurry]

Hi I'm not sure if I've done this wrong I've only done it this way twice duo to the size of the water change

60/70% water change, filled using hose pipe from tap treat hole tank with 5 ml prime leave it about 10 mins and turn filter back on

How long does it take for the prime to work?

As my water stats have now changed

Ammonia 0.6ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Nitrate 5ppm

I'm worried I've killed the bacteria as the ammonia is 0.6ppm
Tank been cycled 6 months and I check every few weeks and ammonia has always been 0ppm

Have I killed my filter

 

[mattyeatsmatts]

Its best to condition it before adding

 

[ian]

it should be fine, there is talk about mature media not actually being as susceptible to chlorine as once thought, when i say mature media, i mean anything over 6 months. People have started doing 30% water changes without any dechlor and not having problems. Just remember that prime will bind ammonia to ammonium which will show on many of the off the shelf test kits. The Prime would work pretty quickly.

 

[FishFanatic04]

I turn my filter on as soon as my tank is full. Test again in a bit, probably fine.

 

[Tolak]

I leave my filters running while filling, dose after filling. If tap water contained enough disinfectants to wipe out a mature bio filter it would be undrinkable, but would make a great toilet bowl cleaner.

 

[Spurry]

@mattyeatsmatts, conditioning 100lts of water would buckets and buckets, loads of people on here with large tanks fill direct from the tap.....

@ianho, so if it's ammonia to ammonium this could show as 0.6ppm on my ammonia test kit?
Keeping fingers crossed will retest tomorrow
I added about 6 ml of prime as it says you can double dose although 6 ml is not double, once I've added it I just swirl it around abit and like I said it was about 10mins all though probably longer as I cleared the hose of water out side and put every thing away

Also to note I missed a feed yesterday as I have that algae thread open I've also missed today's feed....

@fishfanatic04, cheers will test again befor I go to bed and in the morning...

 

[fishprotector]

I normally turn all electric off to the tank during a water change process. I just dose the prime direct to the tank as I am refilling from the hose. The power goes straight back on once it is full. Never had any problems.

 

[Rorie]

For the past two years i took up doing 50% water changes on my 360L every week. I switched off filters and power heads, put a pump in and drained to the toilet.

I then add enough dechlorinator to do the whole tank, then fill with a hose. Then switch the filters etc back on.

The reason i kept filters off etc was 1) to ensure they were not sucking on air if the water level dropped below the intake 2) incase there was any issue with untreated water bothering the bacteria. As others have said, this prob wouldn't be problem anyway.

I was keeping discus and cardinals in this way with no problems at all

I had ammonia spikes, but the issue was there was ammonia in my tap water! So check that....

 

[Spurry]

@Tolak and fishprotector, so why am I getting a ammonia reading I've never had any before after cycling....

@Rorie, first thing I did was test the tap water as my tap water ph changed by Yorkshire water anyway I tested for ammonia and tap is 0ppm so I tested the tank again and got 0.6ppm

 

[fishprotector]

Have a look on the Seachem website (link below). It states that the prime binds with the ammonia until the filter process it and can give a false positive in a test.

http/www.seachem.com/support/FAQs/Prime.html

 

[Spurry]

Have a look on the Seachem website (link below). It states that the prime binds with the ammonia until the filter process it and can give a false positive in a test.

http/www.seachem.com/support/FAQs/Prime.html

Ok I've read it but I don't understand the different prosses for different test kits

The test kit I'm using is nutrafin test for the ammonia and api for every thing form there onwards

Hmmm I'm still lost

 

[fishprotector]

Any liquid test kit uses chemicals as a reagent to test the water. This means that the contents of the tube are added to the water to start a chemical reaction, the results of which you read on the chart. It seems that because Prime is an ammonia binder, it will give false results on this kind of test.

 

[Spurry]

I'm guessing that different makes use different chemicals
My nutrafin nitrite test had two chemicals and my new api nitrite had only one to do the same test

So fingers crossed its a false reading or a quick spike
And not me killing the media

 

[phocoena]

If you read the link as well it mentions to types of test kit - Nessler and Salicyte. Nutrafin is a Nessler based test kit, and Nessler based Ammonia tests aren't compatible with Prime.

With the API/Salicyte based ones, according to seachem, and again it should be on the page linked you are meant to read off the result straight away and not stand for 5 minutes.

 

[fishprotector]

It will be a false reading. Try again in 24 hours and it should be zero. Generally speaking, you are best doing tests before a water change anyway as that is your tank at its worst.