Lol, yup I've heard it's not so easy to find ammonia (typically Ammonium Hydroxide) cleaner without surfactants. So just go to Ace Hardware, as everyone says they have it without surfactants.
Still read the ingredients label though. You don't want any scents/fragrances or any other additives either.
You can shake the bottle and if it foams, then it has surfactants. Without surfactants, shaking it would just mix up some air bubbles that would pop quickly.
Online there is Dr. Tim's Ammonium Chloride as another option.
Do you have Chloramines or Chlorine in your tap water? If you have Chloramines, just adding tap water conditioner will instantly produce ammonia. This is why you want to use something like Prime which temporary make the ammonia nontoxic by doing something with the ions.
Anyway, I think the beneficial bacteria can still use this ammonia when cycling a tank.
Dont they put Chlorine and chloramines in water to kill bacteria?
Not all additives are listed suractants either. I bought ammonia from walmart and it turns out there is another name for surfactants, I cant recall it now. I ended up giving up on ammonia and cycled my tank naturally (also fishless).
Anything breaking down in there will do the trick, fish food is one way to go.
I just throw floaters in there and don't bother with cycling, the floaters will eat up the ammonia as fast as the fish can produce it.
Doing the fishless cycle thing is fine, but unnecessary if you understand how to utilize your plants.
Yep, and shellsie if you add floaters like water lettuce and duckweed to a setup like that (I did the same thing, topsoi from the property here with a cap) then if more ammonia is produced, then you just make more floaters. For a while those will go nuts, then they'll slow down when everything settles a bit. The water parameters should stay in line.
Last tank I threw some Harlequin rasboras in there only about a week after setting it up, but I made sure it was planted heavily and plenty of floaters.
There are many ways to set up the right conditions for a tank to "cycle". What the point of doing a fishless cycle with ammonia does is set up a controlled way to get the bacteria colonies produced quickly and at a very high level. What makes the difference in how each of us may want to do this will depend on what we expect. If we are not adding any fish to be harmed by ammonia, a cycle is not needed. If we are going with lots of plants and then after some time adding a few small fish, we may wind up fine as well. But the fishless cycle really comes into importance if we have a different situation.
If you are going to order fish, it is often reasonable to order them all at one time. This may be necessary due to the type of fish. Some fish are less likely to give trouble if they are all added at once, but many times the reason is to save on multiple shipping charges. When adding a large group of fish all at one time, it is very important to have a set of bacteria that can process a large amount of waste from day one. The controlled way to assure that is done is to do a fishless cycle. If you are using a given amount of ammonia each day and see that it is being processed down to nitrate, you know that you are ready to add a large order of fish. But if other methods of cycle are used, there is more chance than the bacteria colony is not large enough to fully protect you from a sudden ammonia spike. When dealing with adding a bunch of large expensive fish, the fishless cycle is the sure way to go.
Once I have a fully established tank and the filters are all well set, I never do a fishless cycle as such but a somewhat modified form. I swap out media to the new tank and then use ammonia to test that it is being processed before adding any large number of fish.
I find there are very few set rules to follow but many things where we need to understand the what and why and then adapt the methods to meet what we find we are doing at the time.
I see both methods as working but a couple differences that may matter. When we use ammonia from natural sources like decaying food of some type, we may need to wait longer for the food to degrade to the point of producing ammonia and then we are never sure of how much ammonia we are getting. A teaspoon full of fish food will give different and unknown amounts of ammonia at different times.
So it depends on what end result we want. If we want to have a known full blown colony of bacteria, we need to know how much ammonia we are seeing processed. That is what tells us how many fish we are ready to add safely. It also does it quicker as we can manage the amount of ammonia to max the growth of the bacteria. One is more closely controlled to give a more regulated end result where using the natural materials like food can be slower and less reliable. Getting too much ammonia can kill the bacteria we are trying to produce.
Both methods work but knowing how and why each work is a big start on getting the right result.
Then there is also the question of how much harm we may be doing to any fish we use. Ammonia damage isn't something that we can judge precisely so when I read that fish were used and they were not harmed, I still have the thought that it might not be totally true. When we read about fish that suddenly die for no reason, I sometimes wonder if it is from ammonia damage that doesn't kill immediately but still leaves the fish set up for an early death.
I like to keep the unknowns in my tanks as low as possible so I favor doing all I can to avoid exposing fish to ammonia.
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