RBA

My 10 gallon is going thru cycle for a month now. ammonia still 1.0, nitrite also 1.0 and nitrate 0. If i use Prime to get rid of ammonia will it affect the cycle? Is it ok to use Prime during cycle?

Mari

I would personally not use anything to get rid of ammonia directly, what you would be doing basically is inducing a chemical reaction to convert (metabolize) ammonia into something more (or less)toxic. What I would do is add some organic substance that will increase your "ammonia converting" bacteria, such as BioSpira (heard a lot of great comments of this product). What you basically want is to increase your Nitrobacter and Nitrosomas and other bacteria which will break up ammonia and into nitrites(still toxic), then another one which will break that into nitrates which are not toxic (actually good sign if this increases as you probably know).

Carillon

Are you cycling fishless or with fish? If you are cycling fishless, just let your ammonia do whatever it wants. You can add a product like BioSpira to speed things along, but you shouldn't try to get rid of your ammonia, as it is going to be food for your bacteria.

HOWEVER ...

If you are cycling with fish (i.e. there are fish already in the tank), then you are responsible for the wellbeing of those fish and you need to ensure the ammonia does not get too high. You can either accomplish this with regular water changes or, in an emergency, you could use a product like Prime to detoxify the ammonia. In this case, the goal is just to keep the ammonia at a reasonable level throughout the cycle so you'll have happy healthy fishes at the end of it.

Luniyn

Just a note, Prime will only detoxify the toxic part of your ammonia. It will not actually remove any ammonia from the tank. The bound up ammonia will still be in the tank (just not toxic) and it will still need to be eaten by the good bacteria. In your tank, what is your pH? If it is 7 or below then there isn't enough of the ammonia that is toxic to hurt your fish. Just keep doing water changes to keep the level low and they will be fine. However, if your pH is 7.5 or higher then you need to keep that ammonia level at or below 0.5 PPM though water changes or use Prime to bind up the toxic part.