Surfactant

[aberfitch]

Does anyone know if Surfactant is harmful to an aquarium. I am cycling an aquarium and I found some Ammonium Chloride but it has Surfactant in it also. I have done a lot of research on this but nothing is coming up.

[jeej]

They are bad because they can dramatically lower your pH - I know from using Cloudy Ammonia to try and cycle a tank of mine. Plus it leaves a greasy residue on your surface and pockets of it get trapped under the substrate.

Other people might have tales to the contrary, but from experience I would avoid using anything that contains them, if possible.

[Newjohn]

Hi aberfitch

I avoid putting any chemicals in my tanks.

Do you have another tank that is already cycled ?

If so, use some " Filter Squeezins " or some of the substrate to help cycle the new tank.

You Can Not Breed Them
If
You Do Not Have Tem

John

[Neonshrimp]

I agree with Newjohn, I also use the "Squeeze Method" as it has come to be known

[Baby_Girl]

yup, definitely avoid surfactants. For example, if one is doing a fishless (or Shrimpless, as the case may be ) cycle, DO NOT use ammonia solution which contains soaps. Surfactants will clog gills and poison aquatic critters. It also breaks down proteins in their bloodstream, if I remember correctly.

I also abide by the filter squeezing method. It jumpstarts the cycle on your new tank by introducing nitrifying bacteria from the established filter media, as well as giving your new shrimp goodies to munch on. Or you can cut off a section of the mature filter media and stick it in your new filter. Same idea, with even faster results, IME - though of course it doesn't provide as much natural food in the new tank which shrimp can access.

[aberfitch]

well I have already put about 10 drops in to the tank already and it has started to cycle.. Too late but there is no shrimp or fish in it so my plan is to stop using the drops. I have since put a peice of salmon skin in there(somthing I had in the frezer) to continue the process and when the tank is cycled I will do a 90 percent water change a couple times to get rid of the Surfactant that is in the tank now. What do you guys think of this meathond

[Mustafa]

Shake your bottle of ammonia...if it bubbles up like a bottle of soapy water, then I would just empty the tank and start the whole "shrimpless" cycle all over again with pure ammonia. You don't need any "salmon skin". Pure ammonia does not foam or bubble when you shake the bottle.

[aberfitch]

I shook it does foam up. The only problem is I have searched grocerie stores and No one has pure ammonia. Walmart was the closest with ingredients of ammonia, and surfactant. So I went ahead and bought it. It was 1.00 for a Liter. If anyone has any suggestions on where to buy ammonia please let me know. Thanks!

[Mustafa]

I have not looked recently, but you can try to look at places like Home Depot, Ace, Lowes and, most importantly, 99 cent stores. I got my bottle many years ago from a 99 cent store in NYC and that's how I started up a whole bunch of tanks. You will still need *some* kind of biologically active material (i.e. filter squeezings or similar) to jumpstart the process. Otherwise it may take forever (months?) until the cycle has completed.

[jeej]

At least you can actually get pure ammonia in the States. You cant get it at all in Australia.

Give up using the foaming stuff though - nothing good will come of it. I took some poor advice that I could continue using the Cloudy Ammonia, cos once the cycle had finished I could do a 95% water change and everything would be just fine. However, two weeks into my cycle everything (readings wise) crashed. After some investigation it turned out that as my pH had dropped below 6, the 'good' bacteria had gone dormant. Turns out it was the surfactants that lowered my pH so dramatically.

Oh well, c'est la vie!

[aberfitch]

yes I will definately quit using the stuff. I will continue my search. Usually I am really good at finding things. but something as simple as ammonia that cost under 1.00 is so hard to find. Pretty sad

[Baby_Girl]

I've found pure ammonia (without added fragrances or soaps/surfactants/detergents) nearly impossible to find nowadays.

If I were you, I would just put some snails in the tank. After you do a couple large water changes to remove the detergents, of course. The snails will provide ammonia, and when you feed them fish food, they will produce even more! I've also noticed their presence seems to create a more complex ecosystem, which includes planaria, ostracods, sometimes hydra. As long as one does not overfeed, both the snails and the 'hitchhikers' populations are pretty easy to control. But it tells me that if those other inverts are present, the good micro-critters upon which our shrimp feed are probably also colonizing nicely. Snail are good in shrimp-breeding tanks, anyway, because they will eat up extra food and thereby prevent it from rotting to become excess ammonia if the shrimp don't get to it. It's a good situation all around

[aberfitch]

I like the snails idea. only thing is this is a brackish water tank. I don't think regular snails will like the water and it will kill them. Besides I have bought snails about 5 times and They never last in my tanks... always curling up and dying.

[Baby_Girl]

you can use MTS snails all the way up to full marine. However, they need to be properly acclimated to the salt otherwise they could 'curl up and die' too if plunked from straight FW to SW. They're incredibly hardy, so the change from 0 to 12 ppt might shock them a little but they may recover. I just don't make it a practice to continually test the physiological limits of my critters

I plan to use some MTS in my opae ula tank, whenever that gets up and running. I plan on increasing salinity by only 3 ppt per week, to give both the snails and the biological filter a chance to adjust. You can try nerite snails, too. I"m cheap and already have the MTS.

[Neonshrimp]

I like the idea of acclimating the MTS to a salt environment. I too will increase the salinity in small increments.