[ColeMan]

So I just talked to Jeff Senske about cycling with Amazonia II; I asked him if he had any suggestions or words of wisdom. For the most part, it's exactly what you'd expect: large water changes from the git go. But, he did say a few things that may be useful to others (especially new AS users) cycling with Amazonia:

1)The initial NH4 spike in any new tank has potentially very positive benefits for plants, as another NH4 spike this intense will, hopefully, never again occur in an established tank. Granted this isn't really new information (we all know plants use NH4) but it does suggest that using things like zeolite in your canister during cycling, though not necessarily detrimental, is at the very least unnecessary.

2)When using an established filter, growth seems to level off much quicker; there's no explosive initial growth like what is often experienced with amazonia with an immature filter.

3)It's okay to dose potassium from the onset, but perhaps around the 2 week mark one can start lightly dosing other water column ferts; some plants may get deficient, but better than encouraging an algae bloom (i know this is debatable, but...)

I really appreciate Jeff taking the time to talk with me, and so I figured I'd pass along the information (regardless of how well-known it may be). And, for what it's worth, although Jeff did endorse the amazonia over the II, he didn't say that there was anything inherently wrong with the new line; it was, he explained, created to combat some of the problems people were having with the original amazonia (eg. cloudiness), though its efficacy at doing such is questionable.

Hope this information is useful to someone...