On Fri, 09 May 2003 09:47:49 -0400, Rich Conley
wrote:

One more thing - ammonia is poisonous to plants as well as the fish. The
plants can only utilize ammonium, nitrites and nitrates.

NOt tottally true. The plants may only absorb Ammonium, and not ammonia(not
sure)...but even so, theres always an equilibrium between the two, so if the plants
are eating all the Ammonium, a lot of the ammonia will convert into Ammonium.

It's my understanding (from what I've read) that ammonium gets
converted to ammonia if the ph is above 7. I've seen plants rot very
quickly in uncycled tanks with ph 7.2 and measurable ammonia and then
flourish as soon as that ammonia spike is turned into a nitrite spike.
Cris