I guess these days I'm just not used to products actually doing what they claim. The Fritz Zyme 7 worked great and I will be using it on my 90 when it finally arrives.
Fritz Zyme 7 & Gravel with nitrifying bacteria how quickly do they work?
- Thread starter aussieman57
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I meant exactly what I typed. Surfactants are not a problem.
For one the amount of surfactants that is in the ammonia is extremely small. Then they are further diluted by the water. Finally between the carbons and the major water change, there will be little if anything that remains behind. But do not take my word for this, look at the science.
Adsorption kinetics of surfactants on activated carbon
Arnelli1, WP Aditama1, Z Fikriani1 and Y Astuti1
IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, Volume 349, The 12th Joint Conference on Chemistry 19–20 September 2017, Indonesia Citation Arnelli et al 2018 IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng. 349 012001
Like I said I never used pure ammonia, only the household with surfactants but no other additives. I cycled about 9-10 tanks this way before I learned to use ammonium chloride. First I got the liquid form from Dr. Tim's but I finally bought a big jug of powdered ammonium chloride and mix the stuff myself.
For those who do not know, Ammonia in water turns into two forms. One is the ammonia gas itself which is NH3. But in water most of the ammonia turns into NH4 which is ammonium. Ammonium chloride is the powdered form of ammonium. One can remove ammonia from the water either by removing NH4 or by removing NH4. As either one is removed the remaining form immediately converts back to the balance of NH3 and NH4 that is dictated by the pH and temp. of the water.
The reverse applies to adding ammonia. In fact, we never actually add ammonia as NH3, we add it as ammonium. Read the label on a bottle of ammonia and you will only see ammonium hydroxide, not ammonia. When this hits the water some part should turn into NH3. However, it is important to understand that by the time the pH of water hits 6.0 virtually any ammonia is all ammonium.
Just to give an idea of this, consider 10 ppm of total ammonia (as shown by ab API test kit) in a pH 6.0 tank at 77F. The amount of NH3 is 0.0058 ppm and Nh4 ammonium is 9.9942 ppm. Raise the pH to 7.0 and there will be 0.0576 ppm of NH3, and that can be harming fish.
For one the amount of surfactants that is in the ammonia is extremely small. Then they are further diluted by the water. Finally between the carbons and the major water change, there will be little if anything that remains behind. But do not take my word for this, look at the science.
Adsorption kinetics of surfactants on activated carbon
Arnelli1, WP Aditama1, Z Fikriani1 and Y Astuti1
IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, Volume 349, The 12th Joint Conference on Chemistry 19–20 September 2017, Indonesia Citation Arnelli et al 2018 IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng. 349 012001
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1757-899X/349/1/012001/pdf
Like I said I never used pure ammonia, only the household with surfactants but no other additives. I cycled about 9-10 tanks this way before I learned to use ammonium chloride. First I got the liquid form from Dr. Tim's but I finally bought a big jug of powdered ammonium chloride and mix the stuff myself.
For those who do not know, Ammonia in water turns into two forms. One is the ammonia gas itself which is NH3. But in water most of the ammonia turns into NH4 which is ammonium. Ammonium chloride is the powdered form of ammonium. One can remove ammonia from the water either by removing NH4 or by removing NH4. As either one is removed the remaining form immediately converts back to the balance of NH3 and NH4 that is dictated by the pH and temp. of the water.
The reverse applies to adding ammonia. In fact, we never actually add ammonia as NH3, we add it as ammonium. Read the label on a bottle of ammonia and you will only see ammonium hydroxide, not ammonia. When this hits the water some part should turn into NH3. However, it is important to understand that by the time the pH of water hits 6.0 virtually any ammonia is all ammonium.
Just to give an idea of this, consider 10 ppm of total ammonia (as shown by ab API test kit) in a pH 6.0 tank at 77F. The amount of NH3 is 0.0058 ppm and Nh4 ammonium is 9.9942 ppm. Raise the pH to 7.0 and there will be 0.0576 ppm of NH3, and that can be harming fish.
When my 90 finally arrives I am going to give the fishless cycle a whirl. My only question is when you do a fishless cycle do you have to add more nitrifying bacteria product when the fish are put in or are you good to go?
My mistake, I missed the carbon portion of that equation. Probably because I have never used carbon, or household ammonia with surfactants, to cycle a new tank. Seems pointless to me, if one can easily purchase household ammonia sans any form of additives, including surfactants.
Depends on what size & how many you add, the important part is matching the bio-load, to the quantity of bio-bacteria that are established at that time. If you exceed the bacteria in bio-load, you risk setting the tank back into a mini cycle.
Yes, that's exactly what you can do. Just monitor your water after adding fish and treat accordingly.
One of the benefits of a propely done fishless cycle is when it is complete one can fully stock the tank. The time to add bacteria, either by moving it from an established tank or from a bottle of live bacteria, it will speed up the cycle. Cycling is basically a doubling process. The bacteria reproduce faster when there is more ammonia or nitrite than they need. So the more one has at the start, the faster one reaches the full amount needed for a fully stocked tank.
But what really helps a lot is the fact that when one seeds bacteria it is both the ammonia and nitrite ones being added. This means that whatever ammount of ammonia those bacteria can convert to nitrite, there will be enough nitrite ones to convert it all to nitrate as fast as it is created. It is only when the ammonia ones reproduce to handle more ammonia that there might be a bit of nitrite showing until the nitrite oxidizers can catch up to it.
Under optimal conditions the ammonia oxidizers can double in about 8 hours and the nitrite ones in about 11-12. It is not uncommon when ones seeds bacteria which still need ro muliply to reach at the numbers needed for onel never to get a nitrite reading.
But what really helps a lot is the fact that when one seeds bacteria it is both the ammonia and nitrite ones being added. This means that whatever ammount of ammonia those bacteria can convert to nitrite, there will be enough nitrite ones to convert it all to nitrate as fast as it is created. It is only when the ammonia ones reproduce to handle more ammonia that there might be a bit of nitrite showing until the nitrite oxidizers can catch up to it.
Under optimal conditions the ammonia oxidizers can double in about 8 hours and the nitrite ones in about 11-12. It is not uncommon when ones seeds bacteria which still need ro muliply to reach at the numbers needed for onel never to get a nitrite reading.
