URINE vs AMMONIA CHLORIDE powder for tank cycling

Hi,
Im not new to this hobby but have had just one tank that i cycled with LR. this time i wana use dead rock and dont wana use anything old from my current tank. i read many threads about people cycling their tank using Human urine. whats better urine or ammonia chloride. Please dont tell me to use fish or anything else coz i dont like tht.

 

umm....ew....lol I dunno about anyone else, but i like my aquarium to be an aquarium not a glorified toilet for human waste....how about Brightwell MicroBacter7...but IMO even tho u said not to...a fresh dead shrimp from the market does what has to be done..

 

Your urine is going to contain other stuff too. Is use either pure unscented ammonia or just plop a raw fish in there. Or better yet, buy 1 piece of LR to seed your rock.

 

Ammonium Chloride should give what you want, but I would dose regularly throughout the day.

It is not my preference for cycling, but it beats peeing in your tank.

 

Let me just add this for discussion purposes. I get why people don't like to use fish, though I don't think carefully managed, its all that harmful to the fish. I'll leave that tot he experts though and concede that it is at least possible its harmful.

What I don't get is why, in the absence of a fish, we don't just add the food (or half the food) we would have fed the fish for 6 weeks. The fish will metabolize the stuff for you and level out the dosing, but the same nutrients are going to end up in the water. Bacteria is going to do the metabolizing for you in the absence of fish. The result is similar.

Why would you want a large, rotting shrimp in your tank?

 

I hate LR due to the amt of pests like apitasia and vermited worms. thats why im never gona use LR or LS ever in my tank. will just seed coralline algae from my current tank. Well urine is ammonia. anyone ever cycled using urine? i saw a BRS tank cycling video in which they say they added urine to kick start cycling.. Bacteria are air born but might add "Dr.Tims one and only" for faster cycling.

 

i hate shrimp too. i saw many videos of people cycling tanks without using fish and i read about cycling with fish, its really unsafe for fish even though they stay alive. i dont wana do that. ammonia cloride/urine would be better coz if you thinking of heavy stocking (i wouldnt do that), you can add ammonia again when it becomes 0 and you will get a much more bacteria load and would also come to know that your tank has been cycled or no if the ammonia dissappears in 6 hrs and nitrite in 12hrs......

 

Not just ammonia though,it's full of waste and toxins processed by your liver and kidneys,medications you may be on,anything you've eaten or drank,etc,etc.

Those toxins may be minute in say a local swimming hole ,but could be highly concentrated in a closed tank system.I wouldn't do it.

 

kool then i guess Ammonia chloride WINS........

 

If there were an experiment I was going to run, this would be it. It looks like you're about to produce one data point for us.

I have a theory about the long term metacycle our tanks go through in the first year. I think, in the absence of the more macroscopic algae's and micro-organisms live rock provides, the microscopic algaes that can get into our tanks dominate.

I think no live rock is a recipe for long term frustration because the things that eventually stabalize most tanks would not be present in your system. This would be mitigated if some got in on frags, or you intentionally seeded enough of the stuff. The problem is I think populations of a large enough number of types of organisms are one of the key stabalising factors in a reeef tank.