Hi all thought this may be of use I purchased some household ammonia from homebase cost £1.99 also photos so you know what to look for.

front of bottle

back of bottle

Anyone local to me is welcome to use some of my bottle if they cannot find any .

I am going to set up a 165 litre tank, initially for plants only, with CO2 etc. When this is established, I shall add a few suitable fish. Should I go through the fishless cycle, prior to planting, or could I do the fishless cycle with the tank planted??

You can cycle with the tank planted. It will give the plants some time to establish their root systems before any fish are added.

Boots household Ammonia has always worked for me. If you have another source of fully cycled filter media, give this a squeeze into your new tank, looks pretty bad but it seeds the process with billions of bacteria and really speeds things up. I can fully cycle a tank in 10 days using the Squeeze and Ammonia method. Just make sure you do a 90% water change and clean up all the muck from the squeeze. You can add a full bio-load of fish immediately but it you only add a few initially there will be a die-back of bacteria and you will need to introduce fish in small doses thereafter to allow the bacteria to catch up again with the increased bio-load.

Has anyone used this ammonia to cycle a tank? I've heard lots of people say it's safe but I just wanted to hear what you guys have to say about it.

I cant see anything on the bottle that would suggest this product to be unsafe for cycling your tank. I personally use the boots product and have had full success every time.

The important point is to ensure that you use 5ppm when you add to the tank. Always put a "squeeze" of previously cycled filter media into the new tank before you start - looks unsightly but it doesnt matter as you will do a full water change at the end anyway. I can cycle a tank in 6-8 days using a "squeeze" or 10 days without.

Hope this helps.

Hi what do you mean by a squeeze? And how would I obtain it, just setting up my new 4 foot tank and need all the help I can get. My fish are in a 30" tank at the moment