Is this ammonia ok for fishless cycling?

[roydooms]

Tomorrow I'm planning on running out to Ace hardware and buy the pure ammonia they sell. I have a 55 gallon tank cycling and it's taking forever and the 50% water changes is taking it's toll on me lol tomorrow I'm going to move my fish to a smaller tank until the 55 gallon is cycled. My question is how much of the ammonia should I add to start and from there on daily?

I was adviced to use a dropper. Few drops at a time and then test the water. Add more ammonia until you reach 4.0ppm. It only takes a few drops for a 55g.

 

[Sergiotorr]

I was adviced to use a dropper. Few drops at a time and then test the water. Add more ammonia until you reach 4.0ppm. It only takes a few drops for a 55g.

So after you reach 4ppm, are you suppose to test your water daily until you see nitrites? And also are you suppose to keep the ammonia up at 4ppm? How ammonia do you add with the dropper?

 

[roydooms]

So after you reach 4ppm, are you suppose to test your water daily until you see nitrites? And also are you suppose to keep the ammonia up at 4ppm? How ammonia do you add with the dropper?

In my experience, it took a week to get a nitrite reading. Once you start seeing nitrites that means you have the bacteria that eats ammonia. So, the ammonia level will drop. You're going to have to feed the essential bacteria and keep the ammonia level at 4ppm to have huge bio-load. Just remember how many drops it took for the ammonia to reach 4.0ppm. When it starts dropping add ammonia. i.e. if it took 8 drops to reach 4.0ppm and you test your ammonia level and it's 2.0ppm. Add 4 drops of ammonia to have 4.0ppm ammonia.

 

[Sergiotorr]

Ok so that makes sense! I def need to cycle this the right way....

 

[Sergiotorr]

So as I was out at work today I ran into a Ace hardware and decided to run in and buy the store brand ammonia! My tank is at 4ppm now with my fish in another cycled tank. I'll keep you guys posted!

 

[Homedog98]

Cool!

 

[AdamHorton]

You should use test kits to determine how much ammonia you have in your tank, but from my experience, here's the benchmark I go by:

1 mL of ACE Hardware ammonia will give a concentration of 2 ppm to 10 gallons of water.

SO... in your 55G tank, if you want 4 ppm, it should take 11 mL of ammonia if you started from zero before.

I just so happen to be cycling a 55G tank right now and I tested (0 ppm, I had just started) then I added 5 mL of ammonia. I tested again and I got a reading of between 1 and 2 ppm. I added 3 more mL of ammonia and got a reading of just above 2 ppm so I stopped. My test kit gets hard to distinguish between the colors when you start to get up that high.

...just in case you wanted to see some numbers.

 

[Sergiotorr]

Ah cool! I'll def use those numbers! When I added some ammonia to the tank I used a few teaspoons I think 3 and after an hour it shot up to 4ppm! Hopefully we can cycle our tanks in less than a month. Let me know any tricks you try to speed it up and ill do the same

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[ejaramillo01]

File if you need it

8.5 mililiters will give you 4ppm in a 55 G tank.

If your ACE is 10% ammonia concentration

 

[Sergiotorr]

Good news!!! Nitrites are showing!!!! I got 2ppm of ammonia and 5ppm of nitrites! It only took me 6 days to get these showings

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[Homedog98]

Sweet!