Why Ammonia Conditioners?

[Laticauda]

I would use it temporarily if my stock level suddenly doubled and my bb colony needs time to multiply itself to handle the new ammo level.

Wanna hear something crazy?

I had a 90 gallon with ~7 fancy (not full grown) goldfish, some bristlenose plecos, and 9 corycats. A friend of mine gave me FIFTEEN large ranchus, and I put ten of them in the 90 gallon. I tested my water every day, and not even one blip of ammonia showed up. I WAS DOING HEAVY water changes EVERY DAY to keep up with nitrAtes, though. Goldfish are dirty. I don't know why/how it happened that way, but I'm thankful it did!

 

[Scorponok]

Wanna hear something crazy?

I had a 90 gallon with ~7 fancy (not full grown) goldfish, some bristlenose plecos, and 9 corycats. A friend of mine gave me FIFTEEN large ranchus, and I put ten of them in the 90 gallon. I tested my water every day, and not even one blip of ammonia showed up. I WAS DOING HEAVY water changes EVERY DAY to keep up with nitrAtes, though. Goldfish are dirty. I don't know why/how it happened that way, but I'm thankful it did!

Wow, you are so far out. That's one hell of a risk you took. You could have used the conditioner as a precaution to the foreseeable ammonia spike, but daily WC is another way to do it that's a lot safer than any kind of conditioner out there. Kudos.

 

[Spiritofthesoul]

So you are saying those conditioner does nothing except to provide the H+ ion which would convert the NH3 (ammonia) to NH4+ (ammonium) which is less toxic?

Cool

 

[aclockworkorange]

I still completely agree most people that buy them are probably clueless though.

 

[aclockworkorange]

Wow, you are so far out. That's one hell of a risk you took. You could have used the conditioner as a precaution to the foreseeable ammonia spike, but daily WC is another way to do it that's a lot safer than any kind of conditioner out there. Kudos.

That's the cool thing about prime though, acts a dechlorinator and "neutralizes" ammonia. Even if you're doing 50% water changes, there can still be a lot of ammonia with super heavy loads, so the prime helps take care of the rest (temporarily).