Oppurtunity For A Little Experiment Has Arisen

[markandhisfish]

i posted a while ago about using ammonia to maintain a mature filter while a tank was stripped down . i completed the stripdown today but it turns out it will be a week or 2 longer than i anticipated before the discus are stocked , so i now have a mature filter with no fish to "feed" it i will be dosing ammonia to 5ppm to keep the filter ticking over.

chrisbassist had a good idea which may be useful for people cycling a tank . il list tank details including previous stocking , dose to 5ppm and test 12 hours later and post results , when ammonia reaches zero i will dose up to 5ppm and repeat every day until the tank is restocked , hopefully this may help provide information as to the kind of ammonia processing capabilities that are required for a fully stocked tank with a quite high bio-load

tank 4x2x2 100 ukg/120usg
previous stocking 1 red spotted severum , 2 kribs , 5 small angels, 1 glass knife fish , 1 red tailed black shark , 1 golden nugget , 1 gibbicep ( small around 3 inches), and 13 corydora and ran like this for around

2 weeks ago the bioload was reduced by the sale of the severum the kribs and the golden nugget . today the remaining stock was re-homed and ammonia was dosed to 5 ppm ( or as close a can judge from the colour chart) at around 4 pm , il test again as close to 4 am as possible and post results .

i think it will be interesting to see what happens in terms of any change to the biological capabilities of the filter it may just stay the same ( most likely) , decrease ( unlikely)
you never know iit may even increase . after all when is a fully stocked properly maintained tank ever regularly at 5ppm ammonia?

hopefully somebody may find the information usefull ,although if they do any credit should go to chrisbassist as it was his original idea .

 

[chrisbassist]

I may have mentioned it as a way to see how much ammonia needs to be processed in a stocked tank, but credit where it's due. You're the one doing it. So if anything useful comes out if it, credit is yours

 

[Bignose]

I provided an estimate for how much ammonia a fish produces in an old thread: http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/243855-when-is-a-cycle-finished/page__view__findpost__p__2015108

might be neat to see how close the estimate in that thread is to an actual measured amount.

 

[markandhisfish]

well the test result this morning ( 7am) is surprising. ammonia levels are still around 2 to 3 ppm altho to be fair im dosing 450 litres of water which at the moment is under filtered with an eheim 2028. this result has surprised me somewhat as the 2028 with the 2212 eheim internal ( no longer running) used to easily cope with the bio-load of the stock list in originl post.

will test again later this afternoon and post results again .

 

[Truck]

Which test kits are you using and how many tests are you doing at one time?

 

[markandhisfish]

api liquid drop test kit doing 2 tests each time

 

[Truck]

you're better off doing 3 just to rule out any anomalies.

 

[markandhisfish]

just gave the bottles of reagent an even bigger shake and re-tested , results confirm previous test , ammonia levels are at 2ppm , so overnight i have processed 3 ppm of ammonia .

which when you consider the reduced bioload for a coiple of weeks and the fact that im running a pretty low turnover at the moment ( around 2x) thats probably about right

 

[markandhisfish]

slightly worrying results at the moment. either my filter has died off or my test kits are out of date and reading wrong, as for 24 hours now ,ammonia results have stayed exactly the same , so im either not processing any or im getting dodgy test results .

i will give my test tubes a good wash and do 3 tests each for ammonia and nitrites and post results

 

[minxfishy]

Dont forget to test your ph!! Your filter was unlikely to be processing 5ppm as the fish (unless you were heavily overstocked and you werent) were probably only producing 2 or 3ppm at most. SO now your dosing up to 5ppm, the filter will need time to catch up, we only dose to 5ppm in a fishless cycle to ensure the filter is stable and able to cope with a full tank load and hopefully unlikely to spike once fish are added.

The reason I say to test your ph, is because you are forcing the bacteria to grow, it may (as sometimes happens in a fishless cycle) drop the ph, if the ph drops, the bacteria stop growing and a water change is needed to get it back up again, or some people add bicarb of soda to keep it stable during the process.

 

[markandhisfish]

ammonia results

test 1 2ppm
test 2 2ppm
test 3 2ppm

nitrite results
test 1 1ppm
test 2 0.5 to 1 ppm
test 3 0.5 to 1 ppm

the presence of nitrite at least confirms ammonia is being processed but seems to of come to a stop. i have noticed that the flow was signifigantly reduced so i have taken the filter off cleaned it out took off the impellar etc cleaned all that , and flow has noticeably improved , so i will; watchg and see what happens today .

i will have to order a ph kit , i may well do a waterchange later just to be safe .

 

[minxfishy]

Dont forget you have also for a week, lowered your waste load in removing your biggest waste producing fish, ie, plec, sev, kribs. The corys you had hardly produce anything, so the bacteria will have died down a little too, so the results to me, look about right, it will take a good few days for the bacteria to catch up and grow enough to cope with the extra load.

 

[markandhisfish]

yeah hun i have accounted for that but i rekon id underestimated the size of the reduction in bio-load when the stock was reduced . ok so sure the corys give off next to nothing but there was also the glass knife , rtbs, 5 juvie angels and a 4 inch gibbicep .
i was planning on renewing all my test kits anyway when i did the new setup , but i think now i will do this sooner .

 

[chrisbassist]

Slightly worrying. And you can't blame the bacteria needing time to increase with the load. Since in a day, the ammonia went from 5 to 2 ppm. So that's 3 processed in a day. Another day gone and it hasn't processed any more? That's wrong because in 24 hours the bacteria would have doubled in size (at least) and would now be able to process 6ppm in a 24 hour period. (if you were adding that much, but don't.)

 

[markandhisfish]

yeah thats what has me slighly dubious , the fact that it has stalled