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I want to rescape with ADA AS, but have fish...

5678

5678

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27 May 2015
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Location
South Oxfordshire
As per title, I have one 50l tank and want to redo it factoring lessons learned so far.

I want to use ADA Amazonia to try it out for myself, but I'm unsure how I can manage this with my fish.

I have a 25 litre bucket that I guess I could home them in with a small internal filter running whilst I sort out the rescape.

But how long can I expect the Amazonia to take before it stops letting out high levels of ammonia? The bucket isn't really big enough

Would dosing a large amount of Seachem Prime work? Or would that negate the benefit of using the Amazonia?

I was tempted to use the Tropica substrates, but I'd always be annoyed that I hadn't tried the ADA.
 
Guess so! Hadn't thought of doing it that way round. The only annoyance would be having to scape with wet Amazonia.
 
I use an Ikea Samla plastic storage box for a quarantine tank. Would probably work quite nicely for this and is < £5. I've kept fish in it for a few weeks with no problems. Obviously ensure the heater is not directly touching the box..! The ideal thing would be to find an equivalent product which is marked as being food safe.
 
Or dose daily with Prime or Amquel which will remove ammonia. Had to do that before after an emergency rebuild.

Or daily large water changes.
 
ian_m said:
Or dose daily with Prime or Amquel which will remove ammonia. Had to do that before after an emergency rebuild.
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I dont think this is safe because it will just join to the ammonia temporarily but it will probably go back into solution.

ian_m said:
Or daily large water changes.
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I like this more.

If you want to be sure mix the three methods i.e bake the soil, water changes and dose prime daily.
 
I have new AS on top of old (about 30% new 70% old) Its early days but I am not having any issues with daily 20% water changes and a large well established filter.

If you can plant densely from the start and do daily changes for the first couple of weeks I reckon it should be fine and Amazonia really does seem to be a superb substrate.
 
Jose said:
If ammounts are high and filter is not great then it can go back to the water.
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Never heard that before. I had no issues when I had to do emergency ammonia removal and in those days I was using only a crappy 400l/hr internal filter on 180litre tank.

Yes I was aware the Prime and Kordon can affect the results of ammonia tests (bleaches test strips I seem to remember).
 
I read up on Prime quite a bit when I set my tank up and I understand it to convert ammonia to ammonium which is then removed by water changes and not the filter.

If Prime will do the job without and negative impact on the aquasoil then I'm happy with that. I'll leave my fish in the make shift tank for a week once the rescape is done and then look to reintroduce them after a week of daily water changes and a 5X dose of prime.
 
I used Kordon Amquel (not the AmQuel+, which doesn't remove ammonia) when I did mine.
 
5678 said:
If Prime will do the job without and negative impact on the aquasoil then I'm happy with that. I'll leave my fish in the make shift tank for a week once the rescape is done and then look to reintroduce them after a week of daily water changes and a 5X dose of prime.
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Check Seachem's Ammonia Article & Seagram - I'd be inclined to use Amguard & Ammonia Alert as this will provide more stable control than increased dosing of Prime (which seldom "lasts" longer than an hour under typical aquarium conditions, even when dosed in higher amounts).

You can use any food grade container for the fish, note that you do want to provide a dark back & side if you place the fish in a temporary container, also consider vibrations.

Have fun with the rescape :D

(of course you could use Tropica's (made in Japan) Aquasoil ;) )
 
Good call on Amguard. Hadn't seen that and have just read up on it. I'll be sure to get some of that. I already have one of their Ammonia Alert cards.

The container I have is a solid blue plastic. I am going to put some wood with moss and a few rocks in there to break it up a bit for them.
 
The sensor membrane works best if it's kept wet (re the 1 year expected life), if you pull the card & allow it to dry then attempt to re-use at a later date, response is more variable.
(I don't know if this is still on the Seachem site somewhere ... it had come up in a discussion)

What livestock do you have?
 
I ran my fish in a 1/2 size plastic dustbin for a week or so once. No filter, just heater and airstone. Hung the heater from a piece of wood across the top of the dustbin, so it wouldn't touch and melt the sides. Put some plastic plants and rocks in to fish to hide in. Had to put a cover on as one evening we had a "jumper" trying to escape (clown loach).
 
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