Tankless Fishless Cycling

[Miles_hot]

WWhen doing a tankless cycle what level of ammonia do you add - enough to take the bucket to 5ppm or sufficient to represent the level which would be present in your full scale tank? I know this seems a daft question as I understand that above the 5ppm level could be toxic to the bacteria we want however surely if you do it at this level you then end up with a filter which is only able to support 5 gallons worth of fish and hence end up doing a fish in cycle when you introduce are than 5 inches of fish....
Thanks in advance for explaining this to me

 

[drobbyb]

I thought about this very thing. It is possible to fully cycle a filter using a 5 gallon bucket, but in order to do so you would have to add ammonia multiple times daily. I moved everything into the 30 long for the remainder of the cycle.

 

[drobbyb]

Progress!

 

[Gvilleguy]

You can say that again, Phase II Boy!

 

[waterdrop]

Looking good Robby. WD

 

[Joshwainwright]

Good stuff!

 

[drobbyb]

Ph: 8.2
Ammonia: .25 ppm
Nitrite: .25 ppm
Nitrate: 160 ppm


Not long now!

 

[Gvilleguy]

Cool! The peppered cory shoal and the two dwarf gourami did not do well in the 10 gallon setup I had going - I lost five of the corys the past two days (with all water stats looking good, too). Yesterday I moved the two gourami and the one remaining cory to my main tank. And right now I'm doing a drip acclimation for three more corys (purchased today) so that the surviving cory won't be lonely. After you take my rams I will get a few more corys to complete the shoal.

 

[drobbyb]

I picked up five 10 pound bags of ecocomplete for $10 from Scales and Tails yesterday. Hopefully my new stem plants will like it.

 

[waterdrop]

The ecocomplete can serve as a good "bridge" of micro-nutrients for the plants if you were to go on weekend get-aways or otherwise have to miss your plant dosing schedule. I have off and on been trying to study a procedure that Tom Barr has where you use his "GH booster" formula to lightly bring up the mineral content to a minimal point that is supposed to be better for a number of plants. Given the extreme lack of mineral content that our Carolina water seems to have in many cases I feel like this may be good. If I ever get it figured out I'll try to pass on what I learn but I keep having trouble finding the right places to read or figuring it out. At some point though I hope to just give up on all my non-CO2 experiments and get to switch over to trying out CO2.

WD

 

[drobbyb]

It's a substrate, Eco Complete.

It's supposed to be good stuff. Russel, the owner of Scales and Tails, used it in his planted tank with great success. We are on the same water supply, so it should work similarly for me as well. Hopefully it's a good place to start.

 

[Gvilleguy]

Did you say you were going to layer Eco Complete on the bottom, and then put something else on top? I can't remember.

 

[drobbyb]

Well, the idea I had didn't work out. I like to think of it like this, I learned one way how not to do it I had to throw out the mess that I made, and the Eco-complete is mixed with the leftover clean gravel I had and I actually like the way the substrate looks (but my planting skills need work) and the green contrasts with the dark substrate nicely. My plan is to get some grasses to carpet the bare areas.

The 30G is coming along nicely. Today no trace of ammonia or nitrites, and nitrates are off the scale. On to the qualifying week!

 

[drobbyb]

Zero ammonia and a trace of nitrite for today. This is the reason we have a qualifying week

 

[waterdrop]