Fish Poop

[**sarahp**]

OK - so I was just wondering about fish poop as you do

It was all to do with fishless cycling and whether you should raise ammonia to 3-4ppm or higher.

So my question - if you have an averagely stocked tank (for hypothesis purposes!!) and all the fish pooped simultaneously - what ammonia ppm would you get do you think?

I suppose I am trying to work out the benefits of raising to 8ppm rather than 3-4ppm and wondering just how big a bio-load a whole tank of fish pooping on mass would cause!!!

(shall I go back to my own world now )

 

[roseK]

i.. i.. i dont know! i dont want to kno!!! *runs away*

 

[jedwards2006]

i think i may have that problem, i woke up the other morning to find the bottom of my tank covered in fish poo.
either all the fished pooped at once or my catfish has the ####s. i dont know, only time will tell

 

[CruX]

Never feed curry to catfish. Is it a Plec? As they seem to Dump for England at the olympics.

As for raising you ammonia to 8ppm I couldn't advise you on the absolute best thing to do for you, but the plus point is once the filter is cycling 8ppm then you can add pretty much your whole stocking list. Some people do a little bit of a wait and see approach and then load it up to 8ppm whereas others bang it up to the max from day one.

Remember that bacteria devides in order to multiply, so it will take the same amount of time for one bacteria to become two as it takes a million to become 2 million. I don't know the exact timings but I think a single bacteria can divide in two in a couple of hours, thats why when you cycle it starts off really slow (unless you can kick start the cycle) then towards the end it starts handling higher amounts of ammonia and nitrite fairly rapido.

Another point to note is you are raising your ammonia to 8ppm daily (if that is what you choose) not adding enough to put 8ppm in a raw tank, as my friend was doing until I realised.

 

[xxBarneyxx]

OK - so I was just wondering about fish poop blink.gif as you do laugh.gif

You are very strange

Scary enough though I have been thinking the same thing recently. Just how much waste does each fish actually produce? One thing I can tell you, I'm not going to be the one to run the experiment to find out

 

[Aphotic Phoenix]

5 ppm is the recommended dosage because once you start getting to higher levels of ammonia you risk actually killing the bacterial colony you are trying to establish.

 

[idlefingers]

Apparently, something like 80% of the ammonia which is produced from fish comes from their respiration so the level of ammonia their poo creates is irrelevant.

 

[xxBarneyxx]

Apparently, something like 80% of the ammonia which is produced from fish comes from their respiration so the level of ammonia their poo creates is irrelevant.

I never knew that!