Clarification on the 6-month wait on clowns

[mikev]

Yes, the experiment as you suggest will certainly prove the point.

Actually, an even more relevant experiment will be this: establish a cycle without fish, let it stabilize on a fixed amount of ammonia, then double the amount of ammonia and see if AmQuel or Prime totally prevent spikes.
(I guess one will have to make a gadget that slowly releases ammonia, otherwise you'll have daily spikes).

I'll search for it, but you probably have the answer already: just where do you find test kits that do not give false positives?
(this btw would be of use to those who use Biospira and similar because these products mess up ammonia/nitrite readings---come with detox'ed food)

[basher]

API (Aquarium Pharmaceuticals, Inc) and Kordon/Novalek both produce test kits that give reliable free ammonia readings.

[basher]

As an aside to our current discussion and more on the topic..

When I got my 210 gallon tank, I did not wait 6 months to move my clown loaches into it. What I did do, was run one of the two canister filters for the tank on the 75 that the clowns moved out of for about a month before I moved them. I moved 11 clown and 3 yoyo loaches without a single loss.

[mikev]

Thanks a lot, basher,

In essense this is what I did last time (29->65, clowns+kubotais), except that I also ran it fishless for a week to build up the cycle and then used my large pleco to decorate the tank for another week (a mature tank should have some poop in it, perhaps?). No real problems.
This time it would be clowns+yoyos->125, kubotais to inherit the 65, same technique.

I brought up the topic only to ensure that there no obscure factor I'm missing...want to be extra-careful with the clowns, they are part of the family now....the 6-mo rule bothered me since I could not figure why.