Ammonia detoxifier is one of those things that always scares me a bit because the detoxified ammonia still shows up on ammonia tests, so I have no way to tell if the ammonia I'm detecting is toxic or not.
Obviously it's best to put fish into fully cycled tanks slowly to avoid this problem, but sometimes life doesn't work out that way. I wound up with ich in my 220G DT and I am just finishing up with the TTM on all of my fish.
I have a 55G and a 20G tank set up to hold the fish while the DT remains fallow, but I'm afraid of ammonia build up as a reasonably large number of fish are added to the tanks in a short period of time.
Because of the length of time it took me to catch some of the fish in the DT I wound up with two batches of fish in the TTM process. One batch finished on Wednesday and they were moved to the 55G and 20G tanks on Wednesday. I also added some BIO-Spira at that time in an attempt to kick start the cycling process and so far I'm only detecting very trace levels of ammonia (less than .25ppm), however, later today I will be adding the second batch of fish and I'm thinking that since the first batch has been in there for 3 days it's probably about time for the ammonia to start building up, and the addition of the new fish isn't going to help.
Unfortunately, to make things even worse, I'm going to be away from home from tomorrow (Sunday) morning to Tuesday evening, and I'm very afraid that toxic levels of ammonia may build up during the time I'm gone. I do have another bottle of BIO-Spira that I can add and I also have some AmQuel Plus that I can add, but I'm not sure if I add AmQuel on Sunday morning if it will still be able to detoxify ammonia that is generated on Tuesday afternoon.
The somewhat good news is that I'll only be 45 minutes from home, so I can come back on Sunday and/or Monday evening to test for ammonia and add more AmQuel if necessary, but I'd rather not make the 90 minute round trip if I don't have to. I do have a webcam that I plan to set up so I can monitor the fish, but it may be difficult to detect early signs of ammonia toxicity over webcam, so I'm not sure I can rely on that.
So I guess my question are these... will the AmQuel last several days? If I add a full dose on Sunday morning will I be good through Tuesday evening? Do you think adding the second bottle of BIO-Spira tonight as I add the additional fish will be beneficial? Do you think I'm better off just planning to come home Monday evening to do an ammonia test and add more AmQuel if it's needed?
Thanks in advance.
Obviously it's best to put fish into fully cycled tanks slowly to avoid this problem, but sometimes life doesn't work out that way. I wound up with ich in my 220G DT and I am just finishing up with the TTM on all of my fish.
I have a 55G and a 20G tank set up to hold the fish while the DT remains fallow, but I'm afraid of ammonia build up as a reasonably large number of fish are added to the tanks in a short period of time.
Because of the length of time it took me to catch some of the fish in the DT I wound up with two batches of fish in the TTM process. One batch finished on Wednesday and they were moved to the 55G and 20G tanks on Wednesday. I also added some BIO-Spira at that time in an attempt to kick start the cycling process and so far I'm only detecting very trace levels of ammonia (less than .25ppm), however, later today I will be adding the second batch of fish and I'm thinking that since the first batch has been in there for 3 days it's probably about time for the ammonia to start building up, and the addition of the new fish isn't going to help.
Unfortunately, to make things even worse, I'm going to be away from home from tomorrow (Sunday) morning to Tuesday evening, and I'm very afraid that toxic levels of ammonia may build up during the time I'm gone. I do have another bottle of BIO-Spira that I can add and I also have some AmQuel Plus that I can add, but I'm not sure if I add AmQuel on Sunday morning if it will still be able to detoxify ammonia that is generated on Tuesday afternoon.
The somewhat good news is that I'll only be 45 minutes from home, so I can come back on Sunday and/or Monday evening to test for ammonia and add more AmQuel if necessary, but I'd rather not make the 90 minute round trip if I don't have to. I do have a webcam that I plan to set up so I can monitor the fish, but it may be difficult to detect early signs of ammonia toxicity over webcam, so I'm not sure I can rely on that.
So I guess my question are these... will the AmQuel last several days? If I add a full dose on Sunday morning will I be good through Tuesday evening? Do you think adding the second bottle of BIO-Spira tonight as I add the additional fish will be beneficial? Do you think I'm better off just planning to come home Monday evening to do an ammonia test and add more AmQuel if it's needed?
Thanks in advance.
