No ammonia source - help

Jamee96 · Feb 21, 2021

We set up our salt water tank tonight with a combo of dry / wet (live) rock, sand, and salt water. Everything is good to go, but we have no ammonia source. We thought there was frozen shrimp in the freezer, but were mistaken and now stores are closed. We are afraid of messing up the cycle we just started... any advice? We do have frozen tuna and frozen shrimp (that is mixed with sauce).. should we rinse off the sauce and just throw it in?

Malcontent · Feb 21, 2021

Just buy some ammonium chloride on Amazon. The shrimp method is unreliable and messy.

Dave1993 · Feb 21, 2021

if you add ammonia source you are going to burn everything that is on your live rock how much live rock did you buy how big is the tank @brandon429 can probs tell you what to do better than me

brandon429 · Feb 21, 2021

Simply add two pinches of ground up fish food it’s better than straight ac because it gives the bac more nutrients than just nitrogen and because it decays into ammonia anyway. Perfect sub

it changes your cycle approach because that won’t hit 2 ppm but nobody cares it never had to. 2 ppm is a made up arbitrary number from other bac brands. Simply add the feed, the bac, wait to the number of days on the label for the particular strain used, it’s cycled. Tests may or may not agree, but it is.