Stalling cycle help

How are you adding ammonia? What is your source of ammonia?

 

10% concentration of pure ammonia

 

Sorry but pure ammonia is a gas so you can't be adding that. Your solution you have is either ammonium hydroxide or ammonium chloride. Does the label say?

 

sorry was not at home at the time, its 10% ammonium hydroxide

 

Have to make an assumption that is it 10% ammonium hydroxide by weight and volume of water
Meaning weight of ammonium hydroxide (NH4OH) and volume of water

Easiest if we work in metric

1 liter of water contains 1,000 milliliters so a 10% solution of NH4OH would have 100 grams of NH4OH in it.

The formula weight of NH4OH is 35.04. NH4 (ammonium) is 51.48% of the total formula weight.

This means that 51.48 grams of the 100 grams is ammonium.

So 51.48 grams/1,000 milliliters means there are 0.05148 grams of ammonium per ml of the 10% solution you have. To convert from grams per ml to milligram per ml we times by 1,000 so there is 51.48 mg ammonium per ml of the solution.

Let’s say you have a 50 gallon tank. That’s equal to 189 liters (50 x 3.785). If you put 1 ml of the 10% solution in that size tank you have added 51.48 mg into 189 liters which equals 0.272 mg/L (51.48/189) if measured as the ammonium ion.

1 ml is 20 drops from a ‘normal’ dropper bottle. Or 1 teaspoon is 5 ml (really 4.9 but we can round up).

To determine what your ammonia concentration should be (assuming there were no bacteria to oxidize the ammonia so we can call this the max ammonia value) we need to know the volume of your tank and the amount of the 10% ammonia solution you added.

To determine what the nitrite concentration should be (assuming there were no bacteria to oxidize the nitrite so we can call this the max nitrite value) take the ammonia value from above divide it by 1.358 and then multiply it by 3.284.


And that’s the chemistry lesson for tonight!

 

the volume of the tank is about 48-50 gallons, its a 40 breeder with 15 gal sump that is filled 2/3 the way

 

so after it drops, you want me to put in 1 ml of my 10x ammonia hydroxide or so and see if it drops to 0 and 0 in 24 hours?

 

yes try that

 

nitrites dropped to 0 today when got home, just added the 1 ml of ammonia, we shall see what happens in 24 hours =) ill test mid day tomorrow to see where everything at, then again at 24hour

 

Good news! we'll wait for the update