Started New Tank (Nursery) - Need Advice Please!

[Curiosity101]

I don't understand where your ammonia source is coming from in the fry tank... it seems to be developing ammonia from somewhere... is there anything in it? Was the gravel/sand from another tank or something?

 

[fluffycabbage]

yeah the gravel was from the previous owner, who had several very healthy looking tanks - im beginning to think not now!

do you think i should get the gravel out and put my new substrate in then?

there is a plant from the main tank and 2 live plants too. should i take them out?

 

[Curiosity101]

Well something is creating ammonia. I wouldn't blame the previous owner neccesarily. But it makes me think either the plants are dying or there is some organic waste in the gravel.

Give the gravel a good stir and see what happens. Seeing as the fry don't need to go in ASAP it certainly wont hurt for the bacs to develop further

 

[fluffycabbage]

thinking about it, when i put in the fresh water earlier there were some snails in it - would that be a bad thing? would i need to destroy them? are they whats creating ammonia? i will give it a good stir now anyway

 

[Curiosity101]

Snails will create ammonia just like any other living thing. But they aren't a problem. At the end of the day you want your filter bacs to be able to cope with your fry.

Imagine fry create 1ppm ammonia per hour (random number picked out of thin air).

Well if you got the filter processing 1ppm of ammonia with the snails and then added the fry which created another 1ppm of ammonia. Then the total being created an hour would be 2ppm, but your bacs would only have to double in size (so only need to replicate once) to be dealing with the additional fry.

Obviously you don't know how much your bacs can cope with, equally you don't know how much the fry create. But that's why I'm saying further developing the bacs isn't a bad idea. Whilever you have an ammonia reading your bacteria will multiply, so hopefully once your levels hit 0,0 and you put the fry in you wont have so much as a spike.

 

[fluffycabbage]

ok yeah, understood better to be safe than sorry eh

thanks for all your help, i really do appreciate it very much