So I decided to impulsively buy some Eco-Complete at an LFS last week, and finally got around to scaping both my 5 gallon shrimp only tanks on 5/9. I added 4 drops of ammonia in each... and that brought my ammonia levels to way above 8 ppm (the color was almost black).
Today, 5/12, I decided to check how the tank with the small rock-cave that had already been in an established tank was coming along. It read .25 ppm ammonia. I decided to leave it there for 15 more minutes, so I tested the other one.... reading of .5 ppm of ammonia.
I figured that had to have been wrong, so I test both again, and same readings of ammonia. So then I test for Nitrites; .25 ppm, then Nitrates; 10 ppm.
I still had the bag of Eco in the trash can, so I read through it, and it said it contains live bacteria... does it really?
This is just amazing!
I'm going to have to keep feeding it ammonia until I can afford to get my tigers and yellows in at least 2 weeks.
I don't know whether this makes any difference but:
Tanks 1 has:
- 1 piece of driftwood covered in java moss
- java moss wall
- dwarf hairgrass
- duckweed
Tank 2 has:
- 1 small "rock-cave" from already established tank (Ok, so this does make a difference, but that's still some very fast progress)
- Dwarf Hairgrass
- Duckweed