Starting Fishless Cycle With Ro Water

[Detritus]

Hi All
After doing some basic testing ( still waiting for my master test kit) it looks like I have very hard water and higher PH that may restrict my options, so after another TFF member mentioned about RO Water (ty WILLS) I think that may be a better way to start my Fishless cycle.

I have a small tank, 23L and would like Shrimp and Guppies as an example, small lively stock, not packed to the hilt.

What are the best methods of starting a fishless cycle with RO water, do I need to "buffer up"(not sure what that is yet) whilst adding the ammonia or before or later?

Do I replace all my existing tap water in one go or shall I replace over time, but note I havent even added my amonia yet as I havent starting testing yet?

Regards

D;¬))

 

[waterdrop]

Good morning Detritus and Welcome to the beginners section!

I've had a look at your Intro discussion with Wills (one of our good advisors on cichlids in my opinion!) and I'm going to respectfully disagree just a tad. I feel you should not jump to conclusions about your water parameters prior to having the right sort of testing kits. It appears your discussion was based on paper strip results and we just usually find those so useless that we feel they can be misleading. It sounds as though you have an API or Nutrafin master kit on the way and I'd recommend for your particular situation that you also look for a GH/KH liquid kit (in the UK I believe Salifert kits are not overpriced and can be dropped at your door or both API and TetraTec make these kits.)

I would really find it surprising if your guppies couldn't adjust to your local tap water, especially since that is really their preferred general range anyway. While it could still turn out (via good testing and good discussions with various members here) that your mineral content and hardness are exceptional and warrant extreme action, that's a very rare thing and as aquarists we usually try to avoid it if at all possible. The problem is that its such a very powerful thing to have your tap water parameters be your safety fallback so to speak. The danger is that if you have to move away from your tap water and have acclimated your fish to a different hardness, a day almost inevitably comes when something goes wrong and you are unable to provide this for them (you were planning to get more RO but left on vacation without doing it and your feeder person finds the fishtank leaking... lol, weird stuff like this.)

Anyway, I would just let another set of numbers come in and let us work on getting some of our livebearer experts look at those and comment on how they would be for the guppies & shrimp.

Meanwhile, in my opinion, there should be no reason you can't start the fishless cycle with your nice hard tap water. The thing you are cycling is the filter, not the water. The water for the fishless cycle should be considered as a totally separate thing from the water that will be used for the fish, despite the fact that a bit will intermingle when the switch is made. During the fishless cycle the water is "the bacterial growing soup." The ideal soup for our two species of autotrophic bacteria is pH 8.0 to 8.4 (and its quite good for this high pH to come from mineral content because the bacteria need some Calcium and iron, which they get from tap water.) The soup temperature that I like is 84F/29C and you want good surface movement and a good filter flow rate to promote lots of oxygen in the water for the bacteria. Ammonia and oxygen and hard warm tap water is what they like. At the end of the fishless cycle this will all be thrown out and your fish water will be started and by then the robust bacterial colonies will not mind the change at all.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Detritus]

Thanks Waterdrop

I jumped the gun a little as already in my tank this morning I found a heavy hard deposits on the water line of lime scale and thats in just 48hrs, I really do have such a nightmare with hard water here, not just in with an aquarium but in kitchen and appliances. I have 3 suppliers of RO water within 4 miles of me and one of them comes highly recommended, so I have had a major change today, I've just done a complete water change with RO water, cost me £3.99 for 25 liters. Also bought some mature media to put inside tank to boost bacteria levels, one wooden log and 2 small lumps of what looks like a porous rock. Also added a fresh bottle of JBL Filterstart to add to the RO water. Will be starting my fishless cycles with that setup within the next 48 hrs after my Nutrafin Mini Master Kit turns up. I will get the extra GH and KH kits next. Thank you so much for your information though, its all about learning and you've certainly give me that today.

Ill post back on my numbers soon.
Regards
David ;¬))

 

[Detritus]

Thought I'd add a picture of my tank so far:
You can see the white ceramic thingy which is mature media, and I've hung it infront
of the filter inlet with another behind the mature wood. Quite please with this so far.
Looking forward to getting the fishless cycle properly started.

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Detritus.
As WD said, the idea that your water is not appropriate may be a bit misleading. I have water that has a GH and KH that are both over 10 degrees while having a TDS, total dissolved solids, that is over 225 ppm. With my water I can cycle without worrying about the pH dropping on me and I can use straight tap water for almost any livebearer and can support having many of the corydoras, angels and similar "soft water" fish. That does not mean that I can breed corys in my water. They will not breed there, but will live to a ripe old age in my water. What I do find instructive is that the fish that are reputed to require soft water with a low pH a do great in my tanks as long as I do a drip acclimation when I first introduce them to my liquid rock, hard water. Using straight RO water poses its own challenges. Although I have an RO in my kitchen sink, I seldom use that water for anything except as makeup water when my tanks are showing the result of water evaporating. I have no trouble using RO water as water to top of a tank, but hesitate to use it for anything else. The basic problem is simple to state. Fish must have some amount of mineral content in their water. In my own case, most of my fish require a rather high mineral content so they get straight tap water. The small number of the fish, in my case cories, that require soft water get a mix of RO and tap water. What I try to do is get the mineral content of the water in the cory tanks to a bit less than 100 ppm. For me that means a mix of 3 parts RO and one part tap water. I can substitute rain water for RO and have the same result. My rain water runs about 8 ppm of TDS and the RO runs about 20 ppm TDS. The regular tap water of around 225 ppm TDS means that either one, RO or rain, gives about the same results after mixing with tap water.

 

[Detritus]

Welcome to the forum Detritus.
As WD said, the idea that your water is not appropriate may be a bit misleading. I have water that has a GH and KH that are both over 10 degrees while having a TDS, total dissolved solids, that is over 225 ppm. With my water I can cycle without worrying about the pH dropping on me and I can use straight tap water for almost any livebearer and can support having many of the corydoras, angels and similar "soft water" fish. That does not mean that I can breed corys in my water. They will not breed there, but will live to a ripe old age in my water. What I do find instructive is that the fish that are reputed to require soft water with a low pH a do great in my tanks as long as I do a drip acclimation when I first introduce them to my liquid rock, hard water. Using straight RO water poses its own challenges. Although I have an RO in my kitchen sink, I seldom use that water for anything except as makeup water when my tanks are showing the result of water evaporating. I have no trouble using RO water as water to top of a tank, but hesitate to use it for anything else. The basic problem is simple to state. Fish must have some amount of mineral content in their water. In my own case, most of my fish require a rather high mineral content so they get straight tap water. The small number of the fish, in my case cories, that require soft water get a mix of RO and tap water. What I try to do is get the mineral content of the water in the cory tanks to a bit less than 100 ppm. For me that means a mix of 3 parts RO and one part tap water. I can substitute rain water for RO and have the same result. My rain water runs about 8 ppm of TDS and the RO runs about 20 ppm TDS. The regular tap water of around 225 ppm TDS means that either one, RO or rain, gives about the same results after mixing with tap water.

Hi Oldman47
Thanks for your heads up. Is the TDS the same as either of the GH or KH tests? or do I need to get another test kit for doing TDS?
Regards
David

 

[OldMan47]

TDS is something that I measure using an electronic metering system. As far as I know there is no simple chemical indicator that you can use to measure TDS. On the other hand you can get a fair idea of how hard your water is by using the simple GH/KH kits where each drop that you count is another degree of hardness. Since a degree of hardness is about 17 ppm of mineral content, the two numbers are interchangeable to some degree. My 225 ppm of TDS would mean a hardness of about 13 degrees but it is not quite that value for GH because not all of the dissolved solids are chemicals that contribute to GH. I use the meter that I bought for my RO unit to help me understand what is going on with my water's mineral content. The GH test is an attempt to give you the hardness of water, which is indicative of the calcium and magnesium in your water. Since there are often other metals present, like sodium, the total dissolved solids is a bit higher than the solids indicated by simple hardness tests.