Any interest is a thread on the bio-farm in which I am cycling 15 filters to go into 8 summer tanks?

[TwoTankAmin]

If folks are interested, I have just begun this project. I need to create 8 instantly cycled tanks as quickly as possible. I do this by cycleing all the filters in a sing 40 gal tank. They will ultimately go into the following gal. size tanks:
1 x 50
2 x 40B
4 x 20L
1 x 10
Total gallons 220. The three larger tanks will each have two 5x5x5 Poret cubefilters. The three 20Ls will each have 2 4x4x4 cubefilters and the 10 will have a single 3x33x3 cubefilter. 14 filters will be powered by a Jehmco DPH15 Diaphragm Air Pump, 15 watts (8 to 15 outlets). Then three will use a Fusion 600 with 4 outlets. One is not used in a tank but can be hooked to whatever short term need I might have.

So far I have done the following:
Filled the bare bottom 40 gal. bio-farm with warm water, added a pair of 200w heaters and hooked up all the filter. There are two bags of crushed coral in the tank to keep the carbonates/KH up and third is ready if needed. I then dosed 4 ml of Dr Tim;s Ammonium chloride which shoudl produce a it over 4 ppm of ammonia. This should produce just over 5 ppm on the API test.

About 12-14 hours later (yesterday) the ammonia was at 2 ppm on the API kit. I will be changing to my froistz powedered ammonium chloride for futrute additions of ammonia. When the filters are ready I will need to be adding a total of of close to 70 ppm of ammonia in a day as measured by the API kit. This will be about 50 ppm as ammonia-N .

I cannot be adding the bigger amounts of ammonia all at once. They have to be added in multiple smaller doses several times over 24 hours.

The final process will be to move all of the filters into their tanks and then dose 2-3 ppm of ammonia ever other day as I begin stocking. It will take me some time to stock as not only do I need to break down breeder and/or grow tanks, but I need to get pictures of a lot of the fish to be sold as part of the catch and move.

I can either end this thread here or can document it all in this thread. Please vote so I know how to proceed from here.

 

[Colin_T]

You don't want the ammonia level in the water to go above 5ppm or the cycle can stall. If that happens, just a do a water change.

Keep posting updates. It's always interesting to someone.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

You don't want the ammonia level in the water to go above 5ppm or the cycle can stall.

Just so folks reading here understand all of this here is a bit of background.

Over the past 21+ years I have cycled well over 100 tanks. Many were done using the bio-farm approach. I have done summer tanks for years and these need to be cycled at the start of each season. I have been a vendor or room seller at weekend events about 8-10 times. I Use real tanks and cycled filters for this as well.

That 5 ppm number Colin T mentioned is using the Nitrogen scale. If you are using a hobby kit the odds are good it uses the Total Ion (TI) scale. That 5 ppm as nitrogen becomes 6.4 ppm on the TI scale. And once can exceed that 5.0/6.4 number in a day by doing multiple smaller additions. I have 15 filters being cycled for 8 tanks which hold 220 gals in a single 40 gal tank. I need to each of those 8 tanks cycled to handle 3 ppm of ammonia (TI scale) in 24 hours). So the math for this is simple. I need to be able to process 3 ppm for a single 220 gal tank but in a 40 gal. tank. Fristz does not say which scale they are using but the mention the 5ppm stall level so I am assuming they use the nitrogen scale. But I test using the TI scale using an API test kit.

The directions for the ammonium chloride are 4.5 grams will create 4 ppm of ammonia-N in 100 gals. of water. But I only want 3 ppm on my API test kit. so here comes the math.

If 4.5gm will create 4 ppm on the nitrogen scale that would be about 5.1 ppm on the API kit. 3ppm is 59% of 5.1, so for the sake of simplicity I will use 60%. So I need 4.5 x .60 - 2.7 gm per 100 gals. But I need to have this work for 220 gals so I actually would bee 2.7 x 2.2 = 5.94 gm.

Now if I put that amount of ammonia all at once into a 40 gal tanks The ammonia would be more like 22 ppm and that would not work. So how can I get 15 filters to handle 220 gals. in 8 tanks cycled in a single 40 gal tank? Most times I have run a smaller bio-farm, but last year I had to do this for 13 filters for about 190 gals. And I ran into issues because I had never done it on this scale. The problem was I got over confident and stalled the cycle. Instead of needing about 14 days it took almost 4 weeks. It took me about a day to understand the mistake my overconfidence caused.

The nitrifying bacteria use inorganic carbon to aid in converting ammonia and nitrite. The can get this in a few ways. One is CO2 but another is from carbonates and bicarbonates. These two are things associated with K

Buffering Capacity (KH, Alkalinity)​

Buffering capacity refers to water's ability to keep the pH stable as acids or bases are added. pH and buffering capacity are intertwined with one another; although one might think that adding equal volumes of an acid and neutral water would result in a pH halfway in between, this rarely happens in practice. If the water has sufficient buffering capacity, the buffering capacity can absorb and neutralize the added acid without significantly changing the pH. Conceptually, a buffer acts somewhat like a large sponge. As more acid is added, the ``sponge'' absorbs the acid without changing the pH much. The ``sponge's'' capacity is limited however; once the buffering capacity is used up, the pH changes more rapidly as acids are added.
Buffering has both positive and negative consequences. On the plus side, the nitrogen cycle produces nitric acid (nitrate). Without buffering, your tank's pH would drop over time (a bad thing). With sufficient buffering, the pH stays stable (a good thing). On the negative side, hard tap water often almost always has a large buffering capacity. If the pH of the water is too high for your fish, the buffering capacity makes it difficult to lower the pH to a more appropriate value. Naive attempts to change the pH of water usually fail because buffering effects are ignored.

In freshwater aquariums, most of water's buffering capacity is due to carbonates and bicarbonates. Thus, the terms ``carbonate hardness'' (KH), ``alkalinity'' and ``buffering capacity'' are used interchangeably. Although technically not the same things, they are equivalent in practice in the context of fishkeeping. Note: the term ``alkalinity'' should not be confused with the term ``alkaline''. Alkalinity refers to buffering, while alkaline refers to a solution that is a base (i.e., pH > 7).

from https://fins.actwin.com/aquariafaq.html

Last year I allowed all the carbonates/bicarbonates to be used up and the cycled stalled. My KH test had expired so I used my TDS meter to check things and when I disovered how low the TDS were, I realized I had failed to add enough carbonates/bicarbonates. I added a couple of bags of crushed coral. This year I have put those bags in already and have a new HK kit.

I added the initial ammoina dose (4ppm +) and the Dr. Tim's bacteria at about 10pm. on Saturday. On Sunday morning is was just over 2 ppm. It has been moving lower since and testing about an hour ago it was about .75 ppm.

So as to how I will be able to add the ultimate amount of ammonia to the tank to reach the final cycling level I will divide the dose into 5 ppm (TI) portions. I will add one and test. It is important to realize that we cycle with a 24 hour time horizon. We add X ammonia and then need it to be 0 in 24 hours. But inan established tank we never have 3 ppm of ammonia created all at once. Ammonia is being created all day long and in a cycled tank is is used as fast as it is created.

The problem is the bacterial colony can only process so much ammonia. More than that and it builds up. But when ammonia in a tank is more than the bacteria need, they will reproduce. In reality, if a tank produces a total of 3 ppm of ammonia in a day that, would be about .125 ppm an hour were if produced at a constant rate. What we really need here would be enough bacteria to use up all the ammonia created in a day at whatever rate it is being created during that day. Since fish are mostly more active during the day, more ammonia is created then that at night.

So, I can manage to add 22 ppm of ammonia to my 40 gal. bio-farm as long as I add it in lesser amounts over the course of a day. The way I do this I that I mix a days worth of ammonia all at once but then I add it gradually over the day.

As for why I do things this way, it is much easier to do it in one tank as long as one knows what they are doing. My earliest bio-farms were a mix of already cycled filters I needed to keep cycled plus a few new filters that needed to become cycled. Ultimately, this turned into just a bio-farm for cycling filters from scratch.

One last observation about this process. I pretty much only test for ammonia and KH. But this doesn't mean nitrite and/or nitrate wont build up pretty rapidly/ So it is very important to be doing at least two 50% water changes a week if not more. Considering I prefer to add water at or close to the tank temp. and that I need about 80 ft. of hose to do this, it becomes a real PITA. The hose actually runs from a bathroom at the ooposite end of the house from where the tanks are. It is never easy......

Please feel free to ask questions if you have any. I have poker in the city (an hour away) and i am not sure if I can add more ammonia before I leave for that or not. SInce i am going to switch to the dry ammonium chloride, I have to use my gram scale and RO/DI water to mix it.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I am getting ready to test shortly. However, some fill in info.

Two days ago I rinsed out the sponges and floss from an L173 grow tank into the bio-farm. I will be doing this again from another tank or two I will be doing maint. on today. This has two benefits. The first is it does add bacteria to the bio-farm. It also adds fine organic natter which will feed some of the other microorganisms that will colonize and as it degrades is creates a bit more ammonia.

I also just grabbed a few pics of the setup. Unfortunately, there will be reflections in the glass and i am not sure how they will turn out. Hopefully I can add them to the thread sometime today.

I am keeping the tanks in the low 80s F (about 28C). I will also be testing the KH and TDS and organizing a water change of at least 50%. The thing about running a bio-farm like this is that the build of of nitrite and nitrate can happen fast. Hopefully the seeding of Dr. Tim's and the filter squeezings will prevent the nitrite from going too high but the nitrate is another issue.

1 ppm of ammonia on the total Ion scale turns into about 3.44 ppm of nitrate.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Oops forgot to hit enter for this post yesterday- Consider it having been posted on Tursday the 19th/

I am so busy lately and am behind on everything.

Yesterday I tested ammonia at between at about 1.5 ppm. I tested KG a 3 down from 4 and the TDS were 107 ppm which is up from the tap at about 84 ppm. I assumed that part of the RDS was due to the nirtodgen complex and most likely nitrite and nitrate. I did about a 60% waater change and the ammonia then tested between .5 and .75 ppm. I weighed out 1.5 grams of ammonium chloride, mixed it with RO/DI water and added it to the tank. Since I have so many filters bublling away in the tank I only needed wo wait about 10 minutes of so to test. I was expecting a number over 5.5 ppm and up to 6ppm on the API kit but what I got was closer to 5 ppm. Finally, I added the third bag of crushed coral to the tank.

I just tested ammonia about 10 minutes ago and it was about 1.5 ppm. So, in under 24 hours the tank processed about 4 ppm of ammonia. If this were a single tank and the goal was to cycle it to process 3 ppm in 24 hours, it would have been completely cyled

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Ok now its Firday. I tested ammonia at about 2 pm my time, should have done it sooner. It was 0. So I decided to check a few more readings
nitrite between 0 and .25 ppm
KH 2 dg. Three bags of coral and the bacteria are still chewing though it.
pH 7.4 or a tad lower. Checked on both regular and high range kits. This is down from yesterday. lower KH can mean a drop in pH/
TDS 108 ppm. This reflects the nitrate I believe.

So I added a tad more ammonium chloride than I did yesterday. I measure the same amount and then added a tad more since the tank did not have the same ammonia level s yesterday. I went out to weed and did not test right away. But the amount of ammoniu, chloride should have resulted in close to 5 ppm of ammonia.

I just tested 2 hours after I added the ammonia and the tank appears to be at about 3 ppm. I will tst agin in a few hours. I may have to add more ammonia. I will almost vertainly need to change water tomorrow. This may become a daily need very soon. it may even be needed 2 times a daybefore it is done.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

So busy- sorry. I had yesterday's numbers, but they are now old hat. On Saturday I tested 0 Ammonia mid morning and added what I hoped would be 6 ppm. At about 7:50 tonight I tested the tank at .75 ppm. I added another 5.15 ppm. I had planned to do a water change before the second addition if the tank called for it. But I was too pressed for time.

So in about 12 -13 hours he tank basically processed 5.25 ppm. So it should be ahndling 10 ppm+ in 24 hours. That is halfway there in about 6 days. With luck I can be setting up the tanks mid-week. I am sure I will need to add ammonia in the morning.

Here is the neat part. If the ammonia is 0 after I do a water change I can dose about 7+ ppm of ammonia. Normally this is a bad idea if one is doing a fishless cycle. But because of the scale here as soon as the ammonia hits the water the bacteria will take a big bite out of it. If I wait about 10 minutes to test the ammonia will have dropped into the "safe" zone.

I just reread my first post and I must have been temporarily insane when I wrote:
"When the filters are ready I will need to be adding a total of of close to 70 ppm of ammonia in a day as measured by the API kit. This will be about 50 ppm as ammonia-N ."

I need to be adding more like 20-22 ppm on an API kit which would be about 17.2 ppm max. on the nitrogen scale in a 24 hour period. The tanks only need to be ccyled to handle about 2.5 ppm on average and that is 8 x 2.5 = 20ppm total. So I would like a 2 ppm cusihon and hence 22 ppm. That is about 3 additions of just over 7 ppm at hours 0, 8 and 16.

 

[Gemmsy]

Thanks for taking the time to write up, a good read!

Out of interest, once you have Ammonia conversion rate dialled in will you do the same tests for Nitrite or just check it’s also zero after 24h? And what if it’s not?

Secondly you acknowledged the 5ppm ‘limit’ guide for ammonia to prevent cycle stall. What numbers do you use for Nitrite and Nitrate? You mentioned water changes to deal with the Nitrite and Nitrate so wondered what limits you try and stay under with those?

Many thanks.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I have been crazy busy. But I am finding the farm chews through close to 4 ppm in 5 hours or over 19 ppm. I have had to do daily 60% water changes to keep things from stalling.

My base dose of ammonia is 1.75 gm intended to produce about 5.25-5.5 ppm of ammonia. I did semi-stall the cycle two nights ago because I was too tired to do ta water change before adding a dose. the next morning I had too much ammonia. A bug water change and a redose and all was good. So now it is two big water changes/day.

To do a water change I have to haul 10 gals of very hot water to mix with the 10 gals of cold water I can get from the hose. Since the water i will be using for the tanks is at the other end of the house, I will use close to 100 ft. of drinking water hose which runs from a bathroon, down a hall, down 3 steps and then across the living room and out onto the terrace. But for the biofarm cycling I only beed about 25 gals. So I carry 10 gals of hot hot water from the tub to the terrace, I do this under 3 gals at a time because at 5'4' and 135 pounds and being 74 that is about my limit these days.

I have been using TDS to tell me what is up. They rise from nitrate, ammonia/ammonium and the small amount of SeaChem Equilibrium I began addis, I want the trace stuff and iron in it. It helps to prevent stalling a bit.

As far as I can tell I am about done with the cycling. My last ammonia add was last night at about 8:30 and was the second of the day. I did a water change at the start of the day. The ideal would have been to be up at about 1 pm, haul water, do a change and redose. I was out cold well before then. So this morning I did the change and dosed another 5.25 ppm (rem. total ions scale). I tested about 90 minutes later and the ammonia was about 3 ppm. So 2 ppm was processed in 90 minutes. that would suggest the tank can process well over 20 ppm in a day. 24hr/1.5hr = 16. So if it did 2 ppm in that time it could do as much as 32 ppm in a full day. But i doubt the bacteria use ammonia at a constant rate. So the true daily ability is likely less than 32 ppm. But I there is most certainly enough in the filters that I can begin to fill tanks.

Except for the biofarm and the 10 gal. I have sand on the bottom of the tanks. I have heaters, thermometers and wood available for them all. However, there is a slith issue. I have a couple of buyers flying in for plecos on Sunday/ They are interested in fish from at least 4 different tanks. To get the fish out requires removing all wood, rocks, slate and caves from the tank. Some caves will have a dad and babies in them This means that I need about a day and a half to prepare, maybe more.. This also means the filling of the terrace tanks will be somewhat delayed and I will have to keep the biofarm going.

I can set up a tank and move in it's filters from the farm, but I will have to dose ammonia to keep it cycled pending fish being added.

It is times like this that I regret not stopping at one tank

 

[TwoTankAmin]

@Gemmsy

I do not need to test for nitrite or nitrate. The reason for not testing nitrite is I seeded a lot of bacteria, When you do that, you are adding both the ammonia and nitrite bacteria in the proper proportions. That means whatever aamonia the bacteria can convert to nitirite the nitrite bacteria are ready to convert that to nitrate.

So, when I add moer ammonia than the bacteria can handle, they will reproduce and that means they will produce more nitrite. But as soon as that nitrite is present the nitrite bacteria will need to reproduce as well. There is a lag between when the ammonia reproduce enough to handled the increased ammonia, the nitrite one will be caught up a few hours later. And because they only need to handle the extra, the amount of any nitrite is going to be too low to stall the cycle. Nitrite has to be over 16 ppm on an API kit to do that.

As for nitrate, that isn't a problem because I am changing water. Because I am running bags of crushed coral it will hold up the carbonates and the bacteria will ignore the nitrate pretty much. But, I am also changing 120% iof the water each day, and this keeps everythin within acceptable ranges,

The biggest problem is stalling the cycle because the KH gets too low. I can test that directly if I need to. But I test TDS and they tend to go up after the water change due to the ammonia/nitrite/nitrate in the water. But they also go up from the carbonates and from the tiny amount of SeaChem Equilibrium I add.

The water changes also prevent numbers from getting too high.

The real consideration here is that I am cycling water for 220 gal. worth of tanks in less than 40 gal. of water. This is what makes it tricky, You can not do this by adding a single dose of ammonia, it is way too much.

Bear in mind that in a going tank the ammonia is being produces 24/7. But we never detect it unless the tank is not cycled or not completely cycled. However, adding 2 or 3 ppm of ammonia 5 - 7 times means a max of 21 ppm is going in. But i am trying to add about that much in a day for things to be cycled, I cannot do it in one addition and I will run short of needed things without changing the water, Basically the cycle will slow or stall because of what isn't there rather than what is.

I added ammonia to equal 5.5 ppm and in about 4.75 hours there was only .5 ppm left when I test before writing the post by about 20 minutes. That means the bacteria are converting 5 ppm in under 5 hours, But to be safe I will call that 1 ppm/hour and that gets the tank close to 24 ppm/day.

The water the ultimate 8 tanks will hold is about 6.2 times what is in the biofarm. So if I want to handle about 3 ppm in those tanks, I need to be able to process 6.2 x 3 ppm or about 18.6 ppm. But I like a margin of error so I was thinking that 20-22 ppm would be a good target. I am basically there. The one thing I did not want to do was to overdose ammonia. So I kept it under 6 ppm Total Ion which meant under 4.68 ppm nitrogen scale.

So it is somewhere between 9 and 10 days to complete the cycling. But this is not your normal cycle. It was a biofarm and i supercharged it with bacteria from day one. Only problem was a lot of them had to wake up and go back to work. I ordered the bottle months ago and kept it in my fridge at 35F. Cold like that slows them down and they were already asleep. The filters I swished are a different story, they were wide awake and ready to go.

edited for spelling, typos and grammar

 

[Gemmsy]

That makes perfect sense thank you. Would be cool to see pictures now and once the tanks are all setup! Would help give an idea of the scale you’re working with and the volume change when the tanks are in and active compared to the same filters in the farm!

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I have pictures of the bio-farm in my camera. it is a tough space. but what I do have is the set-up from last year. The only difference is this year I added another stand with a 20L over a 10. Last years it wast only six tank and 190 gals. Here are last years pics.
The terrace:

Here is the biofarm tank.

Here are the cycling supplies: RO/DI water, triple beam gram scale, measuring cup and spoons and Frist Ammonium Chloride.

50 over20L on left. 40B over 20L other two stands. The 50 and 2 of the 20L are divided using Poret foam sheets. This year all the backs and most sides are painted black or use a black background. This year I used the top middle 40B as the biofarm.

I have no pics with the fish present. They are all plecos and they hide a lot so there is little to see in that respect.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Here is where this now stands. I am ready to start transferring filters to newly set up tanks. but my schedule is nuts and when i can do this all is not as soon as I wanted. Sp I need to keep the boiofarm going. But instead of all the testi ng etc. the system is now simple. Dose 5+ ppm a few rimes a day and do a water change every time before the next addition. If I wait 4-5 5 hours between additions, I should never have more than about .25 ppm leftover and most likely 0. I did the first change and dose this morning between 10:30 and 11.

I have adoctor appt. shortly. From there i am goinf to the stone and gravel yard to grab scraps of slate and river rounds for the tanks. I have plenty of drift wood on hand. There will be no caves in tge tanks as i am tired of having to break them apart t get the stubborn males out.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I need to proofread what I write better Apologies to those reading my posts.

I got scraps from the flagstone sections and 8 assored thinner river rounds. I managed to set up 5 of the 8 tanks ready to go. This was 110 gals. I still have the filters for the other 3 tanks and 110 gals. in the biofarm.

Yesterday morning I changed the farm water and dosed close to 6 ppm of ammonia. Yesterday afternoon when I worked setting up the tanks the ammonia reading in the biofarm was .25 ppm..

I dosed the tanks I set up using Dr. Tim's Ammonium Chloride as it is easier when dosing a single tank. One ml will create 2 ppm ammonia-N in 20 gals. That is equal to about 2.5 ppm on the API test kit. So the last thing I did last evening was to does all five tanks ti 2.6. I did mix the ammonium chloride for the filters left in the biofarm. Because I basically set up half the water in the five tanks it was easy to calculate the ammonium chloride to use. It was 1/2 the dose I had been using.

There is a nasty rain storm with high winds coming our way between 5 and 6 this evening. I need to batten down the hatches. I am not sure I have the time to get the other 3 tanks set. This is especially the case as I am out of wood and slate and have a few river rounds only. When I move fish out of the tanks to the terrace I will have to move some of the wood from these tanks to the terrace tanks.

I run 10 watts/gal. of heaters on the tanks. They rarely go on once summer tamps hit, But now and at the end of the season the night time temps can be in the mid 50s. Below this on a regular basis, and I cannot leave the tanks up. I can fight off a single night or maybe two down to the high 40s. But this means covering tanks with towels and blankets. This is not practical for more than a night or two.

The next few days are going to be crazy busy. Two buyers comeing here avt about 2 pm and then need to be back at the airport for an 8 pm flight. I have to have tanks pulled apart for them when they arrive. To catch plecos, everything in the tank must come out and go ingot a heater, aerated Rubbermaid. I need to hold the cycle on the decor items and to protect for fish that can hide in the wood. I had to lose a few fish way back when to a bucket without any water. They want to get fish from at least 4 tanks maybe a 5th.

It is easy to pull the tanks apart, but it takes some time to put then back together. I expect I will not do most of it until Monday.

 

[Gemmsy]

How is it going?