Surfactants in Ammonia

[Dan Bartlett]

I have been reading in many blogs on the forum about pure ammonia for cycling and that surfactants are bad for fish.  I struggled to find "Pure Ammonia", found some and started cycling, but then found, with my magnifying glass, that it contained surfactants and so now I'm worried.  Will the surfactants stop nitrite from producing and then nitrate?  If you don't add fish till the ammonia level is zero, then shouldn't the suffactant be gone as well?  Appreciate the help.

[Alex Veidel]

I have no idea what surfactants are....let me google it. Surfactants: A substance that tends to reduce the surface tension of a liquid in which it is dissolved. Substances that break surface tension? Might cause your fish food to sink to the bottom faster :) I think the main problem is not that there is a surfactant in the solution, but the issue is what they are using for a surfactant. For example, soap is a surfactant and is toxic to fish. Sounds like a lot of things they would use as surfactants in cleaning solutions are toxic. If you've got an Ace Hardware by you, they carry bottles of pure janitorial 10% ammonia. That's what I used for my system.

[Alex Veidel]

At least, that's my unprofessionally conceived conlusion based on what the little google birdy told me :)

[Jeffrey Ihara]

surfactants and fragrance are added to ammonia-based household products. You don't want to use them.

I found a jug of 10% ammonium hydroxide at the hardware store--no other ingredients. I used that.

[Harold Sukhbir]

Hi Dan,

I would empty/drain/rinse and start cycling with new ammonia. Here, in my country, in all the plant shops we have pelleted Urea, which is very inexpensive and readily available as a source of ammonia.

[Dan Bartlett]

Thanks for the info.  Thank goodness our prototype is not that big and we're not too far into it...

[Alex Veidel]

Where's Vlad? He hasn't come and mentioned "humonia" yet...