Hi there everyone!
Well, I snuck another tank into the house.
While I'm putting together my 150-gallon future reef, I decided to set up a 20 gallon freshwater tank so I could move some of the fish from my 10-gallon (my female platy has had 5 babies--and I need to separate the boys from the girls). I decided on this tank to try fishless cycling with ammonium chloride. I turned the temp up to 82 and started the ammonia dosing. Before I started I used Prime dechlorinator, which is also supposed to remove ammonia. I tested with a Salifert ammonia test kit and got a reading of 1.5 mg/l. I had read somewhere that if you use a dechlorinator that removes ammonia, you can get false readings on your tests, and that you should use an ammonia test kit that is salicylate based. Just for the heck of it I tested again with an Aquarium Pharmaceuticals test kit-supposed to be salicylate based- and got a reading of 6 ppm ammonia. I was wondering what you guys thought about this. Should I use the Salifert kit of the AP kit?