ammonia locking product question

[roseselene]

Hi! I'm curious about the ammonia locking products that I see offered at the store. Are these safe/effective/useful? or are water changes better? If they are ok to use / and/or recommended, at what level of ammonia do you recommend their use vs. just simple water changes to help reduce ammonia?
Thanks!

 

[Anonymous]

If you need to reduce ammonia quickly, I'd spend the money on Bio-Spira instead of chemicals.

 

[roseselene]

Hi! You've mentioned the bio spira before and I haven't been able to find it in either of my LFS's. It is sort of a theoretical question though because we just added a couple of fish to our new tank and had just a very slight ammonia increase which was easily corrected with a water change, I was just curious if those products were actually helpful if we ever did run in to trouble. Thanks!

 

[Anonymous]

If it's a slight change, you may do well to just let it be. (An aside, this is where that feeding of the system prior to introduction of fish makes its mark.)

The chemical ammonia locking products take food away from the bacteria, and seem to set people up for trouble in the future.

 

[hdtran]

Yo, SM,

Is biozyme a generic equivalent to biospira?

Hy