I’ve been considering a “universal ammonia crew” for a while

[Magnum Man39 154]

starter fish to move from tank to tank seeding filters with beneficial bacteria… I initially though it was a great idea… however I now think a large sponge filter is a better idea, pulling one from an existing tank, and replacing that one with a new sponge filter ( I usually run them way over size, and in pairs )… but now I’ve got more questions…

can a used filter from a tropical tank get moved to an unheated tank, and function just the same ( and vice versa )

how long will the filter last with no bio load. or is it best to add that filter, the same time as the new fish are added???

my thought is to get the sponge filters running in my 3 season porch tank, to get the water moving, and things starting, and then replace one of the filters with a well used one from another tank, just before adding fish…thoughts??? ( keep in mind, most of my sponge filters are rated for about twice the size of the tank )

 

[MuddyWaters1]

I use sponge filters both for quarantine tanks and for new ones. I keep extra sponge filters running in a couple of different tanks. I don't put the filter in a new or quarantine tank until I'm adding the fish. I worry about what you just mentioned- how long will they go with no bioload to munch on?

Actually, my current quarantine tank I have a brand new sponge filter. I "lent" the one I usually use to a friend who was starting a new tank and haven't gotten it back yet. I could have used one of the other ones but I was too lazy. I did throw some plants (guppy grass) in the quarantine tank hoping that the bacteria on it will suffice. Just means I have to test for ammonia more- we'll see how it goes.

Well, I drifted off topic, but my opinion is that a seasoned sponge filter is a better way to get new tanks going than moving fish around. It's got the bacteria already and you can put the fish you intend to keep in there rather than "starter" ones.

 

[Tomsfish18]

I have been told the bacteria does not just die off.
Eventually it goes dormant but can be revived quicker that starting new.
It takes as long to kill the bacteria as it does to grow it, so it is not an overnight type of issue.

 

[TwoTankAmin34]

Just take a few sponges out of cycled tank filters and rinse them out in the new tank. Then add ammonia as if you were doing a fishless cycle. You should have the new tank cycled for fish anywhere from almost immediately to a as long as a week.

You may need to add ammonia again. Just test and see when it is cycled. The advantage to doing things this way as you do not remove too much bacteria from any one tank. This is similar to using a decent bottles bacteria but a bit messier.

When I had to set up and run my bio-farm to cycle enough filters to be able to drop them into multiple new tanks and then add fish right away I did the above, But I also would get a smaller bottle of Dr, Tim's and added that as well, But I was cycling filters for as many as 8 tanks holding a total of over 200 gallons. I needed to have those filters co well colonized that I could fully stock the new tanks. Because I did not set all the tanks up and stock them in a singled day, it was easier to keep the remaining filters cycled in the bio-farm until they too went into tanks. It was a lot easier to cycle all the filters in one tank than to cycle 8 tanks separately. It took me 10-14 days to get all the filters full cycled from scratch.

The reason seeding a tank with the right bacteria is that the full cycle goes very fast because both the ammonia and nitrite bacteria are present from the start and in the right proportion. Whatever amount of ammonia the filters can turn to nitrite, there are also enough nitrite bacteria to handle it. And even if all one can start with is only 1/2 of what is needed, the bacteria will reproduce in response to the ammonia dosing. The bacteria will for sure double in number in a matter of days.

In my bio-farm I started with less seeding than I would have done were it only a single tank. I could have made things go faster if I wanted to buy more of the Dr.Tim's. But, ammonium chloride is cheaper than the bacteria and I was willing to spend a little time getting it to reproduce. Te good thing about having both types of bacteria at the start is I only tested for ammonia and TDS. I needed to test the TDS to know that there was enough carbonates and bicarbonates in the water for the bacteria who use inorganic carbon.

In the bio-farm those two things can get used up fast. I always have to run one or two bags of crushed coral. Since those things contribute to TDS and can be used up fast, I knew that the change in TDS would be due to a drop in the carbonates moreso than anything else contributing to TDS.

Also, as noted above when the bacteria sense the lack of the essentials then need, they will go dormant. When what they need returns they wake up and get back to work fairly fast. How fast is a function of what condition they are in when the go dormant. The better this is the faster they can recover.

What will cause the bacteria to die off is if one has no fish or other ammonia source and we must add ammonia. of we add too little or add it with too much time between doses, this will cause the bacteria to reproduce mor slowly and the the numbers will shrink. The individual cells live for about a day. Whether or not they will divide depends on the ammonia levels. More ammonia and more of them reproduce and faster.If the ammonia level is decreased, then so to will the size of the bacteria colony.

We can actually control both the amount of bacteria in a tank as well as where it might be living. In my pleco tanks which use Mattenfilters and cubefilters made with Poret foam I want as much of the bacteria in the foam as I can have there. To help this happen I tend to deep vacuum the 1 inch sand bottom right down to the bottom glass regularly. If I remove some of the bacteria from the sand, it means there will be more ammonia in the water short term. The bacteria in the foam sensing this will reproduce faster. And the result is there will soon be enough bacteria overall, but it will have increased in the foam more than in the substrate.

However, the bacteria will always do best where the circulation is best. Everything they need must be delivered to them which is why in tanks, much of the bacteria will be in the filter media. To thrive they ammonia or nitrite, oxygen, inorganic carbon and a trace amount of iron. What is interesting in all of this is that the recently discovered ammonia oxidizing Archaea use copper rather than iron to do their thing. Both the iron and copper are oly needed in trace amounts but are essential for the two microorganisms to survive and thrive.

 

[Jennet18 76]

@ TwoTankAdmin Would this answer why when I added the required amount of ammonia to the tank I started cycling the next day the ammonia read 0. I had been running this tank with heater, gravel, decorations including a plastic plant, and had added some fish food, weeks before I joined this forum.

I had spent a while looking for other UK forums, but there were non other than on Facebook, and I was not too interested in being active on there due to the wrong information given out by people and some bitching going on at times.

I am currently going through the green veg way of getting all the little, and 2 other big snails that appeared in the aquarium following making the mistake of getting a moss floating plant from ebay.

I did an approximate 20% water change today following getting a high reading of nitrate, so will carry on with snail capture and disposal until I put greenery in there and no more snails appear on it before putting fish food in there again. Have been putting a small wafer of food in every few days a letting it float for a little while before taking it out again, in the hope it is not enough to feed the blasted snails but will still keep the good bacteria going.

What are peoples thoughts please?

 

[Tomsfish18]

What are peoples thoughts please?

Sounds like a decent approach.
Look into what is called the silent cycle.
That is using plants and often people never see the ammonia or nitrate issues that others have without plants when cycling a tank.

 

[TwoTankAmin34]

The problems with using fish food to try to do a fishless cycle is best explained with this quote from Dr, Hovanec's site:

Using shrimp or fish food​

One of the more popular fishless cycling methods is to buy a few dead shrimp at the grocery store, cut them up into chunks and add them to the aquarium. The shrimp decay, which produces ammonia to feed the nitrifying bacteria. There are a few drawbacks with this method, one being that the hobbyist really has no way to know how much ammonia is being produced by the decaying shrimp, and the aquarium does not look very good with dead shrimp laying on the bottom. Also, the organic material of the shrimp can cause bacteria blooms which turn the aquarium water cloudy. This method works but it takes time and patience and you will probably see a spike in ammonia and nitrite if you add a medium to heavy load of fish after the initial cycling. Note that some people use flake fish food instead of shrimp but this is not recommended because flake food does not have much organic material compared to shrimp and so does not add a lot of ammonia to the water, but you can use cut fish instead of shrimp.

The nst way to control the ammonia during a fishless cyle is to use ammonium chloride. For a single tank this can be done using one of two products on the market.
1. Dr. Tim's Ammonium chloride- To use Dr. Tim's Ammonium Chloride for a fishless aquarium cycle, add 4 drops per gallon of aquarium water on Day 1 to reach a target of 2 ppm ammonia. Dr. Hovanec uses the nitrogen scale for measuring ammoina levels but most of our test kits use the Total Ion scale. So when he says 2 ppm we must multiply this by 1.28 to get the reading we will get. So the 4 drops/gal. will produce 2.56 ppm.

2. Fritz's Fishless Fuel- this is a similar product to the Dr, Tims. It is the same strength and uses the same Nitrogen scale. So the directions above for the Dr. Tim's also applies to the Fritz product.

Fritz also makes a dry version of the ammonium chloride which is way more than most of us can use. I have this since I needed to use ammonium chloride when I run my bio-farm. It is cheaper and easier for me to use but despite using it to cycle about 30 tanks, I barely put a dent in the big container in which they sell it. I used to use the Dr. Tim's product but it was not economical for my needs. In the final days of running bio-farm I have to be adding over 20 ppm of ammonia in several smaller doses every 6 hours or so.

 

[Jennet18 76]

I did buy Dr. Timms, and this is what I added when I eventually started to cycle the tank. I did this on two occasions leaving a one day gap between them. Both times my results came out first time near 0, think it may have been up to or near 0.25 nitrate from memory and 0 percent ammonia. Both registered 0 the second time (third day). Is there any other reason that it could have been that?

 

[TwoTankAmin34]

Dr. Tim makes the ammonium chloride to help with doing a fishless cycle. If one combines it with his One and Only bottled bacteria you can usually add fish safely the next day. The ammonium chloride gets the bacteria in gear and the fish then become their ammonia supplier. The reason for me saying to wait for the day is to let what comes out of the bottle settle in the filter media and substrate.

The bacteria are not cheap. Ammonium is, relatively speaking. What I do is to buy less of the bacteria than I know I will need and feed them for a bit to get them to multiply. It doesn't take long to get the numbers needed.