thanks, and i know i need to add ammonia, thats why i was worried that it would remove it.
And actually, no water conditioner will remove ammonia. Water conditioner will bind with ammonia to make it safe for your fish. The filter will then remove the bound ammonia and convert it to nitrite, which will then convert it to nitrate.
If you have chloramine in your tap water you should use a tap water conditioner, if not it will take much longer to cycle the tank.
Following is a description of chlorine, chloramine, aquarium filter and tap water conditioners. Sorry it is so long, just wanted a decent description here. If you really don't care about the specifics, just follow the advice above.
1) Establishing a filter means growing benificial bacteria to convert ammonia->nitrite->nitrate (the nitrogen cycle)
2) Chlorine is put in your drinking water to kill bacteria so you do not get sick. Chlorine is not too stable and will disipate out of water in a few hours. Chlorine is bad for fish and you filter (it kills bacteria). But will leave the water before causing too much damage, usually.
3) Chloramine was created to solve this problem, it is chlorine and ammonia bonded together. Chloramine will stay in water weeks if not months. Chloramine is also bad for your fish and filter. Because chloramine is not as good at killing bacteria as chlorine there is usually more of it. Of course, it is just as good at killing your fish.
4) Tap water with chloramine (most tap water in the U.S. now) left untreated is not good. Even in a fishless cycle of a tank. The chloramine will do it's job of killing bacteria (yes, the good stuff in your filter). If the filter gets a little established it will then consume the ammonia part of the chloramine, which will leave the chlorine free, and free chlorine will disipate from your water in a few hours, but remember, it is stronger than the chloramine was, therefor it will attack the benificial bacteria in your filter.
5) Using a tap water conditioner that breaks the chloramine bond will create ammonia and chlorine, the ammonia is tied up (and will create ammonium if you care) this will then get eaten by your filter in the nitrogen cycle. The chlorine is rendered harmless, different products go about this differently, but the vast majority of them use Sodium thiosulphate, which creates things I do not know the name of, but do know the chemical sybols for, let me know if you care.
6) read the label on ammonia and/or chlorine bleach...You can tell how nasty it is to create chloramine, which is the two combined.
7) sorry to have bored you.
I posted this in a different forum a long time ago and got questions about which conditioner I use. I use Prime, simply because it costs less per gallon, smells like doggy poop, but costs less. Any conditioner that states it breaks the chlorine+ammonia bond will work just fine.
/www.thetropicaltank.co.uk/rev-cond.htm
