AMMONIA AT 8 PMM!!!

[person]

So I have a 230 gallon tank that I am Going to fishless cycle, but when I added the ammonia chloride, I accidentally put way too much and my ammonia is at 8ppm. What should I do? Add the bacteria? Maybe add prime? I don’t want to do a water change because I need to make rodi water and it will take a long time.
Pls tell me what I should do.

 

[BeanAnimal]

Prime will do nothing. Add bacteria If you wish, or don’t. The nitrogen cycle will start one way or the other and process the ammonia.

 

[person]

Prime will do nothing. Add bacteria If you wish, or don’t. The nitrogen cycle will start one way or the other and process the ammonia.

Won’t that much ammonia kill the bacteria?

 

[BeanAnimal]

No. Just be patient and let nature take its course. If you want to do a partial water change over the next few days, that is fine but you don’t need to. Don’t add chemicals or any other magic fix. Just time.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I’d personally just add the bacteria and observe. Way too much water to drop ammonia unless there is no other working option.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Add the bacteria and leave it, it will just take a very long while for the system to process ammonia, but it will eventually be converted into nitrate.

 

[person]

Thank you all!

 

[vetteguy53081]

So I have a 230 gallon tank that I am Going to fishless cycle, but when I added the ammonia chloride, I accidentally put way too much and my ammonia is at 8ppm. What should I do? Add the bacteria? Maybe add prime? I don’t want to do a water change because I need to make rodi water and it will take a long time.
Pls tell me what I should do.

Do a massive water change and then add microbacter XLM or 7. As your ammonia will be still up in number, when your ammonia falls and holds a steady reading of Zero for at least 5 days and also nitrate rises and falls and holds at 20 or below- you are cycled. You may add 1.5ml of bacteria per ten gallons daily for next 2 weeks will assure bacteria is sufficient and supported.
Assure you are not getting false readings by taking a water sample to a store that does NOT use Api kits and have them test your ammonia and nitrates and compare readings- then you'll know where your levels truly are at

 

[Garf]

I don’t want to do a water change because I need to make rodi water and it will take a long time.

You could use the extra time that all that ammonia takes to process, to plan a water storage strategy, perhaps. 8ppm ammonia will create 30 ish ppm nitrate eventually. Assuming that's at or around where you want to keep nitrate, waterchanges are part of your near future.

 

[BeanAnimal]

Do a massive water change and then add microbacter XLM or 7.

Just pointing out that It is 230 gallons and he said he does not wish to make the water. Why waste 150 gallons of salt and water to just halve (at best) a meaningless number?

Why go through all of this? It is a new tank starting its cycle. We tend to make things far too complicated for new participants.

We don't need to head down a complex path of verifying readings or diagnosis. He added some ammonia, the number is higher than 0... that is all that matters. The rest will just happen. He can add some bottled bacteria if he wants it to happen a bit faster.

 

[taricha]

Won’t that much ammonia kill the bacteria?

I haven't actually seen evidence that 8ppm (vs say 5ppm) slows most nitrifying bacteria enough to care about (but maybe some do).
Fritz for instance has cycled 40ppm ammonia for me without delay.
Mostly, the issue is that it takes a longer time to see the color change - from say 8 down to 7ppm would look the same - while 2 down to 1ppm would look clearly different.