Re: [APD] Cycling

[Stuart Halliday <stuart at mytriops_com>]

I believe Jerry Baker wrote this email section below:
> Raj wrote:
>> I learnt from some young aquarists here that they seed the tank from an old one and then add ammonia to the fishless tank and keep adding till the ammonia drops to zero and slowly add fish.
> 
> I've had good luck just adding plain old ammonia from the grocery store 
> (make sure it's not soapy ammonia) and letting it cycle.

Yes, I've been testing that method.
Takes an awfully long time though 38-40days.

I then did it again but this time took my well seeded fine foam from a 
filter and squeezed it out to the test tank.

This acted differently. The ammonia disappeared quickly and the nitrites 
rocketed off my test scale (max. 5ppm). No nitrates appeared.

I waited and waited (7 days). No nitrates.

As soon as I did a large water change to get nitrites below 1ppm then the 
nitrates appeared.

Seemingly Dr. Tim Hovanec says if you allow nitrites to go too high it stops 
the nitrospira bacteria from growing.


I also did one test where I added 4ppm of ammonia and this stopped the 
nitrites from developing! So I'd advise only adding 0.5ppm of ammonia at the 
start and not any more. This then doesn't slow the cycle period.

Then if we need to, near the end we can add more ammonia to get the volume 
of bacteria up.

Dr. Tim Hovanec said the same inhibition would happen with high ammonia 
levels. Well this definitely proved it to me.

This site says use 4-5ppm of ammonia!
http://www.wikihow.com/Do-a-Fishless-Cycle
Duh....

I even came across a web article that says add daily 1ppm of ammonia from 
day one!


-- 
Stuart Halliday
http://mytriops.com/
200 Million years in the making...
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