capekate

Hi Harold
I kept my raw fish in the tank for about a week and a half. It really did kick start the cycle, and I see that your raw shrimp is working too. I would keep it in so that it continues to produce ammonia for your cycle process. If it gets really yucky, you can take it out and add another one til you start seeing some good readings of ammonia, nitrIte. At .50 you will want that ammonia to go higher still.

lilsoccakid

remember, you need to always hav a source of ammonia. right now, the shrimp is used to replace /simulate waste produced by fish. the benificial bacteria will die if their is no ammonia in the tank for 24 hours

good luck!

Peterpiper

If you are going to replace the prawn, I would put in the new one then wait 2 days before removing the old one..

harold

Good tip Peterpiper, thanks!

By the way, I'm thinking of adding some soil to the substrate and cap it off with gravel similar to what was done here,



This will allow for more choices with background plants and I figured it's better do it now than later. Since I'm in the middle of cycling the tank would I disturb the cycling process if I were to drain most of the water now? Another thought I had was to finish the cycle then do a 90%-100% water change and add the soil at that time. Would this work or would I have to recycle?

Peterpiper

Draining the water off now would remove the Ammonia and Nitrites... so I would wait until the cycle is complete.
Most of the bacteria will be in the filter, so fill a tub or bucket with some tank water and place the filter in. Drain the tank, add the sand and gravel, add new water, some plants and fish.
Remember that you should add fish within 24hr of the cycle finishing, this is so there is some Ammonia for the bacteria.

Gargoyle

Be careful with the "soil" as well... You may need to recycle after adding it to you tank as the "soil" has a chemical composition all it's own. It could leach excess nutrients into your water column requiring the biological filter or mass to increase it's numbers to keep up with the extra load.

Personally I would just do it now, Add all the plants right away, and go from there. In my opinion there is no point to cycling a tank and then changing it's composition so much to have to do it again. Also if you add enough plants (large amount) to your tank it will never cycle like a "fish only" tank would because the plants will eat up the ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates before the fish even notice them.

Just a little food for thought there.

Barbrella

Too bad you didn't mention that before you started adding shrimp, etc. If you put used floss or sponge from an established tank into the new tank filter, you pretty much have an instant cycle and just need to add fish to maintain it.

You didn't need to bother with all the rest of it.

Peterpiper

I think that the filter was seeded with some media from another filter' and he has readings for Ammonia and Nitrites, so IMO the cycling is incomplete

Peterpiper

?? which type of plant removes Ammonia and Nitrites from the water??

harold

I can only guess that the bacteria in the filter media died off since I did not have any ammonia in the water for at least 48 hours. I somehow missed these points in my prior research. Live and learn.

I was thinking of using Schultz Aquatic Soil which I thought did not affect water chemistry. I may forgo the soil and just stick with some kind of attachable plant. I definitely don't want to start the cycle over. Still lots to learn!

Gargoyle

Primarily any aquatic stem plant will do it.. Some are better than others but it you have alot of them and take proper care of them then they all will.

In my current 55 gallon set up I have no "bio media" at all.. I simply do not need it with all of the plants.

Peterpiper

This is the first I have heard of plants used to remove Ammonia and nitrites.
IMO It is the Nitrifying bacteria (Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter respectively) that do the work.

Gargoyle

Respectively the nitrifying bacteria will colonize if they need to with or without bio media being present. But the plants in my tank do indeed do most if not all of the work.

If you like I could present factual evidence to prove my statements.

Peterpiper

Gargoyle,
I am very interested in what you are saying and would like to reseach this.
In marine systems we have sumps that can have a section for algaes/plants that "clean" the water, which means less water changes and less cost..
I was not having a go at you, so I hope you did'nt take it like that..
If you could give a link etc that would be great.
Pete

Gargoyle

No offense taken on my part at all. I enjoy it when people ask questions and challenge ideas. It's how we learn things. Below is one link that explains it well in the "Nutrients" section of the article.

http://www.aquariaplants.com/


Then there are various "planted tank" forums where people converse about these things in particular. Here is a posting refering to what I mentioned above.

http://www.barrreport.com/general-pl...filtering.html

To be completely honest I stumbled across this little bit of knowledge by accident. I added a bunch of plants to my 29 gallon tank that was always high in Nitrates. I would do a 40% water change to get them down to 5 then 7 days later they were at 20 to 30 again. After I added the plants I kept the same routine as well as weekly testing. I found that normally I would have a 15 to 25 point increase in Nitrates in seven days. After I added the plants (a lot of them) I no longer had this increase. As a matter of fact I went about a month with no water changes at all and the nitrates still stayed low after 4 weeks!! Now I don't remember thing perfectly but I did put this all in my fishlore blog for future reference.. I will list the articles in order for you to read..

http://gargoyle.fishloreblog.com/?p=12
http://gargoyle.fishloreblog.com/?p=25
http://gargoyle.fishloreblog.com/?p=27

Now I am no scientist or expert and do not claim to be.. This is just my real life experience with plants in an aquatic environment.

I hope this helps you some..

Peterpiper

Gargoyle,
Mate, you have opened my eyes ( and mind ). You are spot on.
I sent a email to a mate, he is a marine biologist and his response is as follows:

Sorry mate but they are right.
Ammonia is prime food, as in, the main food source, then comes nitrates, but this is changed thru a chemical process and then to food, but again, its ammonia is the prime food of algae and plants.

Same as terrestrial plants.

So in this sece, plants are better, as the do not convert ammonia to nitrite, thence to nitrate, rather, they comsume the ammonia, then it is no more.


So now the can of worms has been opened.. This will change some thing or the way that the tank is set up.
Once again thanks

Gargoyle

No problem at all... I like to share what I learn so we can all be better at this hobby of ours.