Prime With Cycling?

[Arcticfox1977]

My tank is still not cycled. I've started using prime. I have read on here and on the bottle it reduces or even eliminates ammonia. Do I really want to be eliminating ammonia altogether?
Before I used prime I was going 2 days before I needed a WC. This obviously gave the bacteria some ammonia to feed on before I did a WC. However if prime is really as good as it says, will it not stop my cycling altogether?

 

[techen]

When cycling you do not need to use prime, It will just remove all the ammonia.

 

[fluttermoth]

Prime doesn't remove ammonia (sorry to disagree with you, techen!), it turns it into ammonium, which is less toxic to fish, but still usable as food by your filter bacteria.

 

[snazy]

Sorry to disagree with both of you guys. But there's no way Prime would be converting NH3 to NH4? Otherwise Prime would be affecting the PH.
As far as I am aware, it convert ammonia to molecules similar or the same as cyclic amines(ammonia on which the hydrogen ions are replaced by organic compounds) and this product takes longer for the bacs to convert, but they do eventually. So there's a delay, but slight and I guess it's the safest way to go when cycling with fish. Don't worry about the ammonia not being available. Do daily water changes because the conversion is temporary and ammonia will just build up if the bacteria has not multiplied enough, and no amount of Prime can help at some stage if not enough water changes are done. Overdosing up to 5x Prime is accepted according to the manufacturer, but that affects the oxygen content so it defeats the purpose as both the fish and bacteria will suffocate.

 

[CJH0825]

On the bottle it says that it DETOXIFIES the ammonia, Not remove it.

 

[Arcticfox1977]

OK thanks for clearing that up.
My bad, must of mid read the bottle.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

It is fine to use Prime to dechlorinate during cycling at the normal dosing amount. Overdosing it will retard the cycle because of what snazy explained- the bacteria can't not use the bound form as efficiently. The autrophic nitrifyers are already quite energy inefficient  which is why they reproduce so slowly. Making them have to work even harder certainly slows one's cycle.
 
Besides, if you are doing a fishless cycle you should only be doing water changes if something goes wrong- a pH crash, low KH, an accidental over dosing of ammonia etc.