Cycling Ammonia

[Kylefight11]

I'm getting ready to start cycling my aquarium but the only non-scented ammonia I can find also has something called surfactant in it. Is this okay to use for cycling my tank? or do I need to keep looking for pure ammonia?

 

[shellieca]

You should use pure ammonia. Do you have an Ace Hardware anywhere? That seems to be the best place to find it.

 

[Kylefight11]

The closest Ace is more than 30 minutes away. I do have both Home Depot and Lowe's but I wasn't able to find any. I may just not have been looking hard enough. For reference I live in Lancaster, California.

Note:
I shook the bottle and there were no suds, so whatever they used wasn't soapy.

 

[jlk]

The Ace stuff is tried and true. Do you have Dollar Tree stores in your area? 'Some' carry usuable ammonia but stock varies from store to store so make sure you check the ingredients (ammonium hydroxide and water- nothing else). You can also buy the Ace/other brands online on amazon/eBay but you will need to factor in shipping costs vs a half hour drive.

 

[20cc]

this is how i cycle my tanks.
go to supermarket and buy a jumbo shrimp...throw it in the tank,,,set and forget.

month later.. remove shrimp ..large water change...add fish..

testing always of course

 

[Fishperson]

NO surfactant or perfume. I have a gallon jug of ammonia, and the ingredients are "soft water, ammonium hydroxide".

I would offer to mail you some, but its kinda illegal.

 

[Kylefight11]

Okay guys, I have given up on trying to find ammonia and have decided to use algae tablets instead.

 

[jlk]

Try fish food or raw shrimp instead. The algae tablets are not going to provide any viable source of ammonia.

 

[Kylefight11]

The algae tablets are fish food, so only certain kinds of fish food will work?
If so, what kinds? The kind I have now is called Tank Nibblers.

EDIT:
Apparently these algae tablets are not, in fact, food. (they were under treats and supplements on Tetra's website). But still, what ingredients does a food need to make a lot of ammonia as it decomposes?

 

[jlk]

Look for ingredients listed as whole fish/fish meal. The higher the protein content, the better at producing ammonia (form of ammonia is product of protein metabolism). It honestly would be a bit cleaner and easier to throw some raw fish or shrimp into a piece of pantyhose and throw this is in your tank. This way it can be easily removed when needed. Fish food will mold and fungus quickly sitting around in the tank/gravel and create quite a mess.

 

[Kylefight11]

So after reading your comment about protein I decided to look at the ingredients on my algae tabs.
Dried skimmed milk, fish meal, potato protein, dried yeast, wheat gluten, ground brown rice, shrimp meal, algae meal,...
3 or 4 out of the first 8 ingredients are largely protein.

Also:
Guaranteed analysis:
min. crude protein 43%
...
That seems like quite a lot of protein to me, but I don't have another fish food to compare it to. Is it enough?

The tablet that I put in a few hours ago has completely disappeared; not even any residue in the gravel. I'm pretty sure the filter sucked most if not all of it up. The water in the tank circulates very well, in fact, it keeps tossing my moss ball around until it lodges into a corner, usually next to the heater(Grr).

 

[jlk]

Umm....I don't know what brand of algae wafers these are but after your done with them, toss them. Skimmed milk as the primary ingredient?!? It's fish food not cat food. Anyway, 40+% protein should be fine. Caveat is your main protein source is milk and if you run into problems, I would place blame on this stuff. I have heard of people cycling with odd things before but milk is a first.

 

[Kylefight11]

I'm actually not that surprised, the entire reason I chose these is that they were the cheapest thing the store had, as I was under the impression that any food at all would work. Someone should really put all of this information in the fishless cycling guides. Thanks for all of the help.