You all have some of the best aquarium pictures I have seen, and are obviously wise and intelligent aquariasts.
Geez I hope the people in the know have been sufficiently buttered up. I am setting up a new tank. It is not my first, but I recently had an unfortunate new tank experience in which 8 of 9 fish died, and I would like to avoid that with the new one by doing things right from the beginning.
I have read a great deal about cycling a new tank without fish, and it seems there are 2 basic methods. One is to cut up raw shrimp and let it rot in your tank. Sounds a bit vile to me. I wouldn't wanna move into a house where a giant shrimp had decomposed. The other is to use "pure" ammonia.
Does pure ammonia refer to ammonia that is free of dyes or scents, or do they mean pure as in laboratory quality chemicals? If they do mean lab quality, does anyone know of a source? My confusion comes in at the "pure" word. Some pages just say ammonia others say pure and others say unscented.
I am almost sure someone has asked this before, but I searched and searched and read several pages of posts before I gave up and asked.
Here is a quote from one of the pages I am talking about
Instead of using fish food for ammonia production, we can also introduce pure ammonia to the tank.
After the tank has been set up (see above), add 5 drops of ammonia per 10 Gallons into the water on a daily basis.
Ammonia will rise to 5 ppm and higher. As soon as nitrites are measurable, reduce the ammonia input to 3 drops per day. Nitrites will rise to similar levels. Keep adding 2-3 drops until the measurements of ammonia and nitrites come out with 0 ppm. The tank has then
Geez I hope the people in the know have been sufficiently buttered up. I am setting up a new tank. It is not my first, but I recently had an unfortunate new tank experience in which 8 of 9 fish died, and I would like to avoid that with the new one by doing things right from the beginning.
I have read a great deal about cycling a new tank without fish, and it seems there are 2 basic methods. One is to cut up raw shrimp and let it rot in your tank. Sounds a bit vile to me. I wouldn't wanna move into a house where a giant shrimp had decomposed. The other is to use "pure" ammonia.
Does pure ammonia refer to ammonia that is free of dyes or scents, or do they mean pure as in laboratory quality chemicals? If they do mean lab quality, does anyone know of a source? My confusion comes in at the "pure" word. Some pages just say ammonia others say pure and others say unscented.
I am almost sure someone has asked this before, but I searched and searched and read several pages of posts before I gave up and asked.
Here is a quote from one of the pages I am talking about
Instead of using fish food for ammonia production, we can also introduce pure ammonia to the tank.
After the tank has been set up (see above), add 5 drops of ammonia per 10 Gallons into the water on a daily basis.
Ammonia will rise to 5 ppm and higher. As soon as nitrites are measurable, reduce the ammonia input to 3 drops per day. Nitrites will rise to similar levels. Keep adding 2-3 drops until the measurements of ammonia and nitrites come out with 0 ppm. The tank has then