Gotta Love Ammonia

[Musho3210]

Are you talking about carbon in his filter? If he had detergent in the bucket, it would have had a pretty quick effect on the fish. And if had leeched into the plastic, it would take longer for it to leech back out tha just the few minutes the water was in the bucket for a water change. Also, carbon usually is only good for a day or so (some say a matter of hours) and then its fully saturated and not removing anything else. It can also slow a cyclin tank as it will pull ammonia from the water. That's basically carbon's job is to remove chemicals like ammonia from the water.

To be on the safe side though, I would get new buckets and mark them as fish buckets so no one uses them for soap.

Carbon stops working when it is saturated. Simple as that, there is no set time, if you have a lot of things to absorb it wont last long, if its sterilized, pure, sealed, airtight water, it will last for years. Plus you have to take into account of the quality of the carbon, how much water is going through it not around it etc. Plus carbon has never removed my ammonia, sponges have, but not carbon. Zeolite is the ammonia remover. Carbon probably does remove a tiny tiny bit of ammonia but it wont remove a noticable amount, at least not IME

 

[rdd1952]

Water in the tank as a general rule isn't that clean. Most estimations I've heard for carbon are that it's good for about 5 to 10 days. I agree that the time it takes to saturate will vary but as I mentioned, there are better media out there that never have to be changed. Carbon is just too much trouble IMO.

 

[Musho3210]

what media that acts like carbon doesnt need to be changed/regenerated? I personally dont use carbon since i think its a waste of cash, i only use it in the initial setup/cycle in case my ammonia had unwanted chemicals in it as well as just a general precaution. I just recommended that he use it incase there are unwanted chemicals in his tank.

 

[Leitch]

I think it should be fine. The tank smells normal and as stated before, i will be doing close to a 100% water change at the end of the cycle anyway.

But i suppose..if there is bleach or something in the water, it will most likley kill the 'ammonia-eating' bacteria in my tank, so if the ammonia doesnt drop then i'll know that the water is unsafe.

 

[Leitch]

and i just realised why the water went cloudy. When i was adding the water i added one scoop through the filter causing some dirt to spread around the tank. But like i said, all is well now so on with the cycle