Need Help! Used Ammonia With Surfactant For Cycling

[Joesmamma]

Please help us as we used ammonia with sucrafant to cycle,
I'm looking for advice for my son, who is trying to start up a large (35gallon?) hex tank. After unsuccessfully trying a very, very small hex tank in which his guppies died after a short time, he has decided to try a larger tank and a fishless cycling this time around. He has been using an article he found on line as to how to do this. Unfortunately the article stated that great value ammonia from walmart was ok to use. He has been adding this and doing testing about 2 weeks. Today I learned that you should not use ammonia with sucrafant in it and this has it in it! Please help me advise him on what we need to do. I hope we haven't ruined his tank and accessories. Please tell me if there is any way to save this, Thanks

 

[Tolak]

Nothing is ruined, the biggest concern with ammonia additives is soap. Shake the bottle, if the bubbles are large & dissipate it's OK, if they are small & a layer of foam remains it has soap. Surfactants doesn't always mean soap. If it does appear to have soap, drain it down, refill, use a different type of ammonia.

 

[Joesmamma]

Thanks for your speedy reply, I'm afraid that we have the soap kind. We are very happy to know that with a simple drain-down that the tank and accessories will still be usable. Is there any need to wash the things off that are inside the tank? Should we replace the filter?

 

[OldMan47]

If you can rinse your decor under a hot water stream, it will be that much less soap retained in the tank. That would be a benefit of it. Unfortunately you will probably never get every trace of soap out of the tank simply by washing things so you must decide which components are worth dealing with to reduce the total amount of soap. Some things, like your substrate, will simply not be worth the effort.

 

[Joesmamma]

We are willing to drain all water and thoroughly rinse everything with hot water (including rocks from bottom) and start all over if it will help. Is there any chance this will work. We have not had any bubbles in the tank on the surface of the water even though we have a bubble wall and two air stones going. We have only been adding very small amounts. Could this work? How will we know if it is safe for fish? Is trying one fish the best,or only way to tell if the water is safe?

 

[OldMan47]

It is not a subject that I have considered at length Joesmamma. Few people actually fall into the trap of using ammonia with surfactants while trying to cycle. As Tolak has said, you can safely proceed as if it had never happened but I disagree only slightly with that. If I see a spot that can easily be rinsed to remove the soap I will do so. After all, why move forward with a wrong set of parameters when they can be easily made right?
Tolak is a very experienced fish keeper so his lack of concern may be completely justified but I am a bit more conservative than he is about fish care. Probably something in between would be a good attitude to take in the long run.

 

[Joesmamma]

Thanks so much for the great advice. Too bad my son didn't find this sight first! I think we will try a start over after thoroughly rinsing everything in hot water. Wish us luck.

 

[Tolak]

As OM stated, he is a bit more conservative, and as stated a good rinse will help to assure any traces of soap or other surfactant residue are removed. If it eases your mind a little I've used products to clean used tanks that require wearing heavy rubber gloves, lest you get acid burns. A good rinse outdoors & there's never a problem. Having done this numerous times I probably am less concerned with contamination than OM, rinsing real good certainly won't hurt anything.

 

[tmiller]

Well one would think, given basic dilution, that if restarting the cycling process after an aggressive rinsing, you could add multiple water changes, say the first time your ammonia dropped to 0 and then every 2-3 days after before re-dosing the ammonia, at some point you would reduce any remaining contaminate to an undetectable lvl.
So this all makes sense to me