thanks for the advise

Whatever you do, don't attempt to smell the stuff, it's kinda burny! I'm such an idiot sometimes, perhaps I shouldn't be allowed to keep fish

Think we have had certain members do this before and post about their regrets .. there's another born every day
you know ammonium carbonate was used in a bottle as sal volatile - smelling salts - to bring young ladies round from a fainting fit ...

Evening all,

I'm currently cycling my new tank and have had no joy in tracking down household ammonia. The staff in my local Whicks and Tescos all looked at me like I'd lost my mind when I said ammonia!

With the potential to make it into something that goes bang is it harder to find these days or do I just need to find better shops?

Cheers,
Pete

btw, I'm using fish food to cycle at the moment.

I think it is pretty easy to find in homebase. It is in the cleaning section. Or at least it was. To be fair you can make a bomb out of nearly anything. If you see someone buying by the barrel then they deserve funny looks.


Cheers,

Jaybird

I'm so glad I found this thread!
Well despite lack of space in our tiny apartment... we've decided that we really had to upsize to a slightly bigger tank for our fish. We've gone from a 65L to 90L. We're doing it properly this time and cycling the new tank before moving the fish.
We've printed the article of this forum about how to cycle a tank using the fish food and ammonia method. The household ammonia that I found in the supermarket contains 41g/L of ammonia. To me that works out to be about 4% -right??
How long should the whole cycling of the tank take before we can introduce the fish?

If you are upgrading and moving all the fish over you really don't need to do a fishless cycle unless you want to in the interests of science

Either you can remove the filter and run it alongside the new filter until it clogs - over a 4 - 6 week period the new filter will become colonised with bacteria and as the old filter gradually runs down the new one will take over.

Alternatively, or if the old one is not removable, and you can remove all the old filter media (sponges etc), take all that out and put it in the new filter, fill up with extra new media, and run. Keep a careful eye on test results for the first couple of weeks to make sure there has not been any bacterial die-off during the transfer.

I personally would only do a fishless cycle when I had to, it is dull looking at a tank full of imaginary fish when your real fish could be in there sooner enjoying the space!

lol the post about smelling it made me laugh my socks off... I started a fishless cycle 2 days ago with boots household ammonia (which you can buy online on the boots website, red cap white bottle, £1.70 something) and as soon as i opened the bottle i had to sniff, what a regret, i thought i was going die, i couldnt breath properly for an hour or so, so i shamefully thought if i was going my partner was to come with me, so i passed over the bottle and said "here, have a sniff of that" haha, his expression was histerical.

Quote:


Evil! I got my ammonia today from Homebase & just had to have a sniff. I still don't feel right and that was 30 mins ago! Thought I'd burnt my nose off! haha

I bought the boots one. It was with the own brand washing powder and stuff opposite the baby food