# ADA Amazonia ammonia battle



## greenteam (Feb 8, 2012)

So I'm setting up a new 20L shrimp tank and after countless reviews on the forum threads I decided to go with Amazonia substrate. 

My problem is that I don't have a month to wait for all the ammonia to burn it self out. I do however have a tank I left in my yard over the summer and the thing has 3"+ thick layer of duckweed in it. Is it even possible to just dump a handful of duckweed and let it soak all that ammonia up??

So any chance this would work?? Or has even been tried in the past?? :help:


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## bostoneric (Sep 7, 2011)

If you really want your shrimp to survive and be healthy, you dont really have many other choices besides waiting it out.
lots of water changes and time are your friends.
even if you get the ammonia under control you still want to have some biofilm growth for the shrimp to feed on.


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## gus6464 (Dec 19, 2011)

Why can't you wait a month and let the tank do it's cycle?


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## Xiaozhuang (Feb 15, 2012)

You can do water changes every day


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## AnotherHobby (Mar 5, 2012)

gus6464 said:


> Why can't you wait a month and let the tank do it's cycle?


This is the real question. Why don't you have a month? Maybe if you explain this, we can help you figure out how you can actually have the time to safely cycle the soil, or provide alternative ideas of what you can do. Because the real answer is that there is no way around the ammonia leaching.


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## OVT (Nov 29, 2011)

Oh well and LOL.

As to the original question: yes it will help to speed up the cycle. The more plants you throw in the faster it will complete. Using a seeded filter / substrate / the right type of BB additive will speed it up even faster. Assuming you have no livestock in the new tank, you can skip the massive daily water changes. Still, expect to wait a week or two, at best.

v3


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## Steve001 (Feb 26, 2011)

If you plant this tank heavily and add CO2 not carbon and lower the PH to below 7.0 the ammonia turns into ammonium which these new plants will readily use up.


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## John Simpson (Mar 14, 2013)

Steve001 said:


> If you plant this tank heavily and add CO2 not carbon and lower the PH to below 7.0 the ammonia turns into ammonium which these new plants will readily use up.


yes, aquasoil is made to be heavily planted on day one, and then people are supposed to do lots of water changes after, there's a constant narrative going around about cycling AS it makes no sense, the purpose of it is for a planted tank


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## gus6464 (Dec 19, 2011)

John Simpson said:


> yes, aquasoil is made to be heavily planted on day one, and then people are supposed to do lots of water changes after, there's a constant narrative going around about cycling AS it makes no sense, the purpose of it is for a planted tank


You don't need to do any water change whatsoever if you are fishless cycling your tank with amazonia. I didn't touch the water when I first set up my tank until the cycle was done and my ammonia got super high at one point (>8ppm). I just continued to dose Nite-Out II at the recommended dosage and 3 weeks later it was fully cycled. This was with 2 brand new filters that were not seeded. Some people say that any ammonia higher than 4ppm can stall the cycle but I did not find this to be the case.

There is no such thing as cycling AS, what's cycling is your bio so that it can handle the ammonia that AS is leeching. AS will leech ammonia for a lot longer than a month but by that time most people's tanks are cycled so the ammonia leech is irrelevant.

Heavily planting with AS is recommended only because of the ammonia leech it will initially have as plants will soak it all up and thrive. You can go either way and still come to the same outcome once proper bio is established.


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## greenteam (Feb 8, 2012)

The reason I can't wait for a month is because I'm moving so new tank in at the new place. Part of the deal is the wife made me get rid of current 10g tank for the 20L tank. That's why time is not on my side lol.


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## somewhatshocked (Aug 8, 2011)

Whatever you do, don't rush it. If you can't make things perfect for shrimp before adding them, don't do it. Or at least try to convince the wife that you could need a couple more weeks with the tank, otherwise you'd risk killing all your critters.


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## Jack Gilvey (Jun 16, 2008)

gus6464 said:


> You don't need to do any water change whatsoever if you are fishless cycling your tank with amazonia. I didn't touch the water when I first set up my tank until the cycle was done and my ammonia got super high at one point (>8ppm). I just continued to dose Nite-Out II at the recommended dosage and 3 weeks later it was fully cycled. This was with 2 brand new filters that were not seeded. Some people say that any ammonia higher than 4ppm can stall the cycle but I did not find this to be the case.
> 
> There is no such thing as cycling AS, what's cycling is your bio so that it can handle the ammonia that AS is leeching. AS will leech ammonia for a lot longer than a month but by that time most people's tanks are cycled so the ammonia leech is irrelevant.
> 
> Heavily planting with AS is recommended only because of the ammonia leech it will initially have as plants will soak it all up and thrive. You can go either way and still come to the same outcome once proper bio is established.


 It's the prevailing wisdom but I never really got the plant-heavily-and-do-daily-water-changes thing. Seems like lots of work. I have a bunch of AS I plan on using but I was going to just add the AS, setup up the hardscape, add water, and do a fishless cycle with no lights (ostensibly avoiding algae) until it's done. Is there some fatal flaw to this plan? Is the main drawback that there's nothing to watch for a while?


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## gus6464 (Dec 19, 2011)

Jack Gilvey said:


> It's the prevailing wisdom but I never really got the plant-heavily-and-do-daily-water-changes thing. Seems like lots of work. I have a bunch of AS I plan on using but I was going to just add the AS, setup up the hardscape, add water, and do a fishless cycle with no lights (ostensibly avoiding algae) until it's done. Is there some fatal flaw to this plan? Is the main drawback that there's nothing to watch for a while?


That's fine. It's up to you if you want to plant heavily or not but it's recommended so that the plants will soak up all the ammonia and grow. While you are waiting for it to cycle might as well grow out your scape too.


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## greenteam (Feb 8, 2012)

Lots of great input. I think it's just best to not rush it I just hope I don't get a batch that takes ages to leach out the ammonia.


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