mats808

also about the ammonia/ammonium thing. I'm not at all saying that anyone should in any way be adding either of these to their aquaria. I only brought this up because people are saying that aquasoil leaches ammonia into the water and that this is a good thing. I would never recommend adding ammonia into your tank....I don't even believe that aquasoil does this.

My point was, whether it's a good idea or not, Seachem clearly thinks that ammonia is bad and so they want everyone to know that their product has no free ammonia and only ammonium. I'm not saying if this is good or bad, or even true. The point was that they went out of their way to let everyone know that their product has no ammonia. Yet people are saying that aquasoil leaches ammonia?

hoppycalif

I'm glad you cleared that up - it looked like you were not impressed by aquasoil. I suspect that the reason ADA doesn't talk about ammonia leaching out of aquasoil for the first weeks after it is set up is because they tell you to do lots of water changes during that time. If you do that there is no problem, thus no need to warn anyone. So far no one seems to think their aquasoil continues to leach anything like ammonia once the first few weeks go by. As someone pointed out, any "old" substrate might release some ammonia if it is stirred up when replanting or doing deep cleaning of any kind, so a big water change after doing so is always a good idea.

From what I have observed ADA concentrates on telling people what to do, not on explaining the chemistry behind what they tell them. I have some doubts about a lot of ADA substrate and fertilizing products, but I sure wouldn't dispute that they can set up beautiful tanks using those products.

St3v3

In all fairness, the step by step setups in the ADA catalogs specifically mention to not release fauna into the tank for at least a few weeks.

mats808

Hi St3v3,
Are you talking about the grayish catalogue entitled "The Style Of ADA"? What page does it say that on? Are you talking about page 30, step 38?
aaron

bsmith782

ADA AS II and ADA AS I release ammonia in the tank for some time after being introduced.

I put a bag in an Eclipse 12 that I keep CRS and RCS in. I was not aware that it leeched ammonia at that time, so I just dug out the old stuff and dropped in the AS. The first week or so were okay, plants looked great, shrimp were happy water was clear. Then during the second week I noticed that my shrimp were acting wierd. I checked my readings and sure enough there was a slight presence of ammonia. I did a large W/C and carried on. Remember at this time I did not know that this product would leech ammonia. A few days later I find a dead CRS in my tank (the water looked nice and clear) and the others looked to me like they were just wondering around aimlessly. I checked again and there was 2ppm of ammonia in my tank!!! I flipped out and changed ~80% of the water and threw as much zeolite (ammona absorbant) as I could in the filter.

Over the next 3 weeks I did water changes EVERY DAY and exhausted a whole .5 l bottle of white diamond ammonia remover, lost 40+ CRS and ~100 RCS.

So I, first hand experienced the release of ammonia in my tank from AS II.

Now I just do as Tex Gal stated earlier, where I "cycle" the AS untill I can no longer detect ammonia in the water.

mats808

Hey bsmith782,
Is an "eclipse 12" a 12 gallon tank? If you lost 40 CRS and approx. 100 RCS does that mean they were all in a 12 gallon tank?

Whether they were or not, there was probably a lot of nitrifying bacteria that you removed when you "dug out the old stuff". I realize that an eclipse has a filter so there was nitrifying bacteria in there but I think that by removing all your old gravel you lost a lot. Plus you may have kicked up a lot of debris into the water column that may have added to the problem. With all those shrimp in there your filter could've simply gotten overloaded resulting in an ammonia spike.

I'm not so sure that your problem clearly illustrates aquasoil leaching ammonia.

bsmith782

How many people who have actually used AS need to telll you that it leeches ammonia for you to get it? The removal of the old fake rock substrate im sure removed a little bacteria but all of the mulm water and plants were still left in.

Shrimp DO NOT give off that much N there would be more then enough bacteria in the filter/mulm/plants/water to take care of what was in there.

I do not know how more clear you can illustrate the fact that AS leeches ammonia then having an established tank for 2+ years with no ammonia in it then introducing AS and having a large spihe.

bsmith782

This man is one of the US suppliers of AS it doesnt get any more from the horses mouth than that.

mats808

i wasn't saying that it doesn't. I said that your example wasn't really a good one. Bottom line that's a ton of shrimp in a 12 gallon. But this is how the whole nitrifying bacteria thing works. An established tank doesn't have excess bacteria. To simplify things, I'm going to say that it has just enough to deal with the consistent amount of ammonia being produced by your shrimp for example. When you removed all your 'gravel' you removed a considerable amount of nitrifying bacteria. Temporarilly the new, decreased amount of bacteria won't be able to keep up with the same amount of ammonia being produced.

So really it doesn't matter if shrimp don't produced that much ammonia and all the other stuff you said. However much they produced, when you removed some of the bacteria there no longer was enough to keep up.....there was no longer a balance.

I've actually used amazonia and I am still using it to grow some potted plants in my breeding tanks.

There's no real argument here. I was just shocked with what everyone was saying initially so I was more just ASKING if this was a guarantee fact or a theory. As the thread went on I even said that it may be beneficial that it leaches ammonia in the initial stages. I just couldn't believe that you would make a product that leaches ammonia on a long term basis or forever in other words.

bsmith782

140 shrimp in a 12g tank is not that densly populated at all. I guess you dont keep any.

Removing the substrate in the tank and replacing it with any substrate is not enough to create a month long ammonia blast. Maybe a tiny bit was but not the vast majority of it. It was because the AS leeched.

If you dont like that example how about this one. I put the AS in a cooler ~45g to leech the ammonia out of it. With NOTHING but water and AS in the cooler ammonia concentrations began to rise and after 3 weeks of daily 90% water changes finally came back down to 0.