wtusa17
Fish Addict
Exactly!!!! Where does it say something about adding nitrates?? I add beneficial bacteria and add waste to let the bacteria break it down and turn it into nitrates. The bacteria grows as it eats the waste
I have a dilemma! Opinions needed
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wtusa17
Fish Addict
This is what I’m doing. You have nitrates when you add the fish. I don’t know what you are confused about
wtusa17
Fish Addict
Lol. The nitrates come from the waste of the fish. You will get nitrates from having beneficial bacteria in your tank…
Which you just added with the media! If you add fish before you are cycled then you are doing a “fish in” cycle. I do not recommend them but good luck.
wtusa17
Fish Addict
Bruh…let me ask you a question, what do you add to the tank when you add media from a cycled tank?
You add bb. Then you test to see if you have ammonia, nitrites, or nitrates. If your test shows ammonia or nitrites then you are still cycling. If (like mine usually does), you have 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, and showing nitrates, then you are cycled. Then just do a water change to get your nitrates down below 20 and you are ready to go. Look, I usually cycle at least one tank a week this way. With 18 tanks and a pond, I don’t have 4-6 weeks to wait.
wtusa17
Fish Addict
Same with me. But I’m trying to say how if you add cycled media and add a little waste that is how you cycle a tank. Not just by adding media
OMG. If you get an automatic cycle you can add your fish and they will make your waste. No more from me. You have given me a major headache. Heck, you don’t even know where you’re at because you don’t have a test kit! You’re fishing in the darK. Moving on now.
wtusa17
Fish Addict
Hey buddy I have a test kit. I never tested my water yesterday bc it had no waste. I knew that since I only add bb I wouldn’t have nitrates. I wasn’t going to waste drops when I knew the outcome. You don’t know what you are talking about saying”beneficial bacteria adds nitrates”. Not how it works. Waste produces nitrates. Cycled media will allow bacteria to turn waste strait to nitrates. That’s what the whole cycling process is doing. It’s to build up bacteria that lets a tank turn the waste into nitrates so that the fish aren’t exposed to ammoniaOMG. If you get an automatic cycle you can add your fish and they will make your waste. No more from me. You have given me a major headache. Heck, you don’t even know where you’re at because you don’t have a test kit! You’re fishing in the darK. Moving on now.
Mature media does not have nitrate in it, it only has bacteria. Nitrate is dissolved in the water not in the media; the bacteria are in the biofilm attached to the media. OK, there may have been nitrate in the tiny amount of water inside the media from the donor tank, but when that was diluted by the volume of water in the new tank it would have been undetectable.
The bacteria in the mature media need a source of ammonia or nitrite before they can produce nitrate. When the tank was set up there was no ammonia or nitrite in the tank, just tap water and media. If the water was tested as soon as the tank was set up, because there was no ammonia or nitrite yet to be turned into nitrate, the nitrate level would have been the same as the tap water level.
As soon as a source of ammonia is added to the tank, the bacteria in the mature media can get to work; the ammonia eaters start eating the ammonia and turning it into nitrite; the nitrite eaters start eating this nitrite and turning it into nitrate. Then the nitrate reading starts to increase. It will take a few hours for nitrate to increase enough so that our test kits can show the increase.
1 ppm ammonia is turned into 2.7 ppm nitrite, which is turned into 3.6 ppm nitrate. If only a small amount of ammonia is added, there will be very little nitrate made by the bacteria; quite possibly not enough for our test kits to measure. Just how much ammonia do 2 juvenile snails make in 24 hours?
The way to test if there are enough bacteria in the mature media is by adding a source of ammonia. If ammonia is added and there is never any detectable level of ammonia or nitrite there are enough bacteria.
wtusa17 put two juvenile snails into the tank. They will excrete ammonia the same as fish - but I don't know just how much ammonia they will make.
So the real question is - how much ammonia do 2 juvenile snails make? More than the proposed shrimps? Less? The same?
If they make more or the same than all the proposed shrimps, and there is never a reading of ammonia or nitrite, it is safe to add the shrimps. But if they make less ammonia than the shrimps, there is no way to know if there are enough bacteria in the media for all the shrimps.
The bacteria in the mature media need a source of ammonia or nitrite before they can produce nitrate. When the tank was set up there was no ammonia or nitrite in the tank, just tap water and media. If the water was tested as soon as the tank was set up, because there was no ammonia or nitrite yet to be turned into nitrate, the nitrate level would have been the same as the tap water level.
As soon as a source of ammonia is added to the tank, the bacteria in the mature media can get to work; the ammonia eaters start eating the ammonia and turning it into nitrite; the nitrite eaters start eating this nitrite and turning it into nitrate. Then the nitrate reading starts to increase. It will take a few hours for nitrate to increase enough so that our test kits can show the increase.
1 ppm ammonia is turned into 2.7 ppm nitrite, which is turned into 3.6 ppm nitrate. If only a small amount of ammonia is added, there will be very little nitrate made by the bacteria; quite possibly not enough for our test kits to measure. Just how much ammonia do 2 juvenile snails make in 24 hours?
The way to test if there are enough bacteria in the mature media is by adding a source of ammonia. If ammonia is added and there is never any detectable level of ammonia or nitrite there are enough bacteria.
wtusa17 put two juvenile snails into the tank. They will excrete ammonia the same as fish - but I don't know just how much ammonia they will make.
So the real question is - how much ammonia do 2 juvenile snails make? More than the proposed shrimps? Less? The same?
If they make more or the same than all the proposed shrimps, and there is never a reading of ammonia or nitrite, it is safe to add the shrimps. But if they make less ammonia than the shrimps, there is no way to know if there are enough bacteria in the media for all the shrimps.
@essjay. How do I get automatic cycles for my tanks then. I know nitrates aren’t in the BB but within an hour or so after adding my used media I have nitrates readings. Then I add my fish. You don’t have to add ammonia in such cases. If you add enough media, the nitrates will test in an hour or so. Then add your fish.
When you seed a tank, do you wash the mature media as well as possible to remove the brown goo? I know it used to be said that the goo contained a lot of the bacteria we want to grow so it was better to use "dirty" media.
The goo is decomposing organic matter (fish poop, uneaten food, bits of dead plant etc) and it contains micro-organisms which convert it into ammonia which will feed the filter bacteria. So if you use "dirty" media, yes you will get a nitrate reading. But if you thoroughly wash the media first, I have no explanation of why you get nitrate without adding ammonia first.
To be honest I have never measured the nitrate level when I have seeded a tank. I stopped believing in nitrate testers when my son, who at that time worked as an analyst at a water testing company, laughed out loud at my nitrate tester.
When I got my pearl gouramis earlier this year I set up my quarantine tank and took some media from my main tank. I knew that because I have a good number of plants (including water sprite) that there would not be many bacteria in the media. So I added ammonia to get 3 ppm and followed the fishless cycling method on here. It was a good job I did because it took 6 weeks for the QT to cycle. That's why I say that adding ammonia is the best way to check, that way we know for sure if there enough bacteria to support the fish (or shrimps) going into the tank.
The goo is decomposing organic matter (fish poop, uneaten food, bits of dead plant etc) and it contains micro-organisms which convert it into ammonia which will feed the filter bacteria. So if you use "dirty" media, yes you will get a nitrate reading. But if you thoroughly wash the media first, I have no explanation of why you get nitrate without adding ammonia first.
To be honest I have never measured the nitrate level when I have seeded a tank. I stopped believing in nitrate testers when my son, who at that time worked as an analyst at a water testing company, laughed out loud at my nitrate tester.
When I got my pearl gouramis earlier this year I set up my quarantine tank and took some media from my main tank. I knew that because I have a good number of plants (including water sprite) that there would not be many bacteria in the media. So I added ammonia to get 3 ppm and followed the fishless cycling method on here. It was a good job I did because it took 6 weeks for the QT to cycle. That's why I say that adding ammonia is the best way to check, that way we know for sure if there enough bacteria to support the fish (or shrimps) going into the tank.
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