Homebase Ammonia Again

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paulbr1

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Hi, I am on day 30 of my Cycle and need a new bottle of Ammo.

My first bottle was from Homebase so I went there last night for another, but because some members have had issues I did the old shake test first and bubbles, bubbles and more bubbles #@*&.

I tried all of them on the shelf and as usual got some funny looks -

I think the batches were 9039 & 9042 whereas my original batch was 8312 and was fine.

Can anybody list their good and bad batches here to give us an idea.

Paul. :huh:
 
Is it foam or just big bubbles that vanish pretty quickly? If it's the latter then it's fine. It's what mine did and I had no problems at all. If it's foam and not settling then it's no good.
 
Yeah, I -do- think you can get carried away and shake so much that you manage to make yourself think its foam when its just bubbles. I don't know, I suppose one needs to be there to see it live (can you imagine a local aquarium society going into the hardware store for a shelf tour? :lol: ) Wish we had a physics bubble-structure expert to tell us some good new way to distinguish soap bubbles from water/ammonia bubbles besides just the subjective foaming level, sigh!

~~waterdrop~~
 
They were still there after about ten seconds and I don't want to risk my cycle (day31)

Paul.
 
They were still there after about ten seconds and I don't want to risk my cycle (day31)

Paul.
I've just checked mine and the bubbles hung around for about 20 seconds but were popping like mad too if that makes sense. My batch no is 8253.
 
:lol: maybe I'll shake my ammonia bottle and count the seconds when I get home tonight and report to you... ('course I'm a space-cadet so I'll probably just forget...)
 
Just for you, did the shake test. just a few bubbles that disappeared within seconds. Batch is 8312 :good:
 
Something just crossed my mind though - and that is that you need another bottle of the stuff! How much are you using? I cycled a 260l with Homebase ammonia and still have half a bottle left! You might be dosing too much which could affect your cycle. Just an observation.

ETA - just seen from your cycle diary you're adding 13ml. 260l tank with 5 - 10l of substrate. That's not much substrate - are you sure it's right? Personally I'd drop your dosing to no more than 10ml - not to save on ammonia - but I think it will help your cycle. jmvho
 
OK, had a laugh late last night as I was going down the cleaning isle in my giant grocery store to get a dish-cleaning sponge... Saw the nice translucent bottles of pure household ammonia (dirt cheap I might add) and laughed, remembering this thread. I picked one up (these are the exact same type I used to fishless cycle) and looked about to see that the isle was empty, good(!), and gave it a violent shake. The bubbles went away in, like, 2 seconds. (sorry Paul!) (this stuff, I know, happens to be even less concentrated than the 9.5% stuff you guys typically get in UK.

Every time I walk past that ammonia, I have a feeling of sympathy for the new aquarists all over the world who struggle to find this stuff and there it sits, for less than a buck for a half gallon, right in my grocery store, in fact in the whole grocery store chain, because I've seen it in other branches of their stores. :(

~~waterdrop~~
 
LOL reminds me of our search for household Ammonia. Found some in our local store. We did the shake test, LOL all GOOD.! My partner then decided to give the sniff test..........(as observed by other shoppers). He was almost sick, and couldn't breathe for several seconds, it took him a while to recover, me then asking "why did you do that"? after a while I think I was told to

"go away" (or something like that) Still, the things we do for our fish lol.

He still says he could have died, breathing in pure Ammonia LOL (it was only 9.5%) lol
 

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