hello everyone!

i dont know if u remember me, but i was having trouble cycling my tank (i still am <_< ). it isnt cycling and it's been about 2 months. anyway, u guys recomended using an ammonia remover so i wouldnt have to do so many water changes and hopefully the nitrates would grow. i couldnt find the jungle labs tank buddies ammonia clear that was recomended, so i got ACE by jungle labs, an ammonia chloramine eliminator.

yesterday the ammonia level was at about 1.5-2, i use the ammonia test tube dropper kit from aquarium pharmacuticles. so i used the recomended amount of ACE. then today when i tested the water, the ammonia was at a whopping 8.0! so i was wondering if the test kit was giving me false reading because of the ACE. since the largest jump of ammonia i've ever had was a 1.0 increase since i kept up the water changes. if anyone has any info, it's greatly appreciated.

hm. do you know whether the kit is a nessler or salicylate type? It should say which in the instruction manual. Maybe that's the problem? Ammonia removers like Amquel can give fase results with the nessler reagent type kit.

it says its salicylate based. so what does that mean?

Here's what I've been told:

The Nessler reagents are thrown off by ammonia neutralizing products such as Amquel. The salycilate kits are generally unaffected by these products. The Nessler reagents are generally more available and I think are cheaper.

So if its a salycilate test, it is probably accurate.

I never recommend using ammonia removing products. If you remove the ammonia, the bacteria never has a chance to change it to nitrites and nitrates, so the bacteria starves and dies off. So you never have a cycle. Then if you stop using the product, suddenly your fish have ammonia poisoning.

Amquel is good for things like this, it detoxifies the ammonia but leaves it there for the bacteria to convert, so it doesn't hurt the cycle.

Test your water out of your tap to see if it has any ammonia alread in it. That might be part of your problem. I would ditch the ACE stuff (but I have no clue what it is, never heard of it) and either use Amquel and daily water changes or at least the daily water changes to keep the levels down.

And of course, let us know what your water is like out of the tap. Let is sit for 24 hours and test it again, to see if anything changes.

I think there must be some mistake with the test kit. 8.0 simply cannot be accurate... wouldn't the fish be dead?

As has been recommended, Amquel is a very reliable product. I used it when I had problems cycling.

i was told on my other post that i wrote a couple of weeks ago about cycling the tank to try a ammonia remover. because the nitrates didnt seem to be growing, and i was having to do atleast 2 water changes a week to keep the ammonia down under 2.0, so the it was decided that maybe the little nitrates that were growing were being washed out by the water changes and not getting the change to build, hence the need for the ammonia remover, since it's been almost 2 months and the tanks still not cycled.

ok, im just going to get amquel, and see how it goes. it's a water conditioner right? because i use aquasafe now, and i need to know if i only need to use the amquel if it's going to help the ammonia and condition the water. thanks!!!!!!!

I'm pretty sure Amquel is a dechlorinator as well, so it should be all you need to treat the water.