How Much Ammonia Does Tss Need To Stay Alive.

Curious, I have a tank that I am getting ready to start and am trying to use seeded media, plants, and TSS to get it started. It's a 125 tank and I have an FX4 filter. I have a 10 gallon tank in my house that has been running for years. Over a month ago I took two bags of ceramic rings and set them into the 10 gallon tank. The tank has been running empty for several days and I have checked the water as well as my water source and it looks like I have ammonia in my well. The water from the well as well as in my tank show 0.5 ppm ammonia. I am going to pick up 4 fish tomorrow (starting lite). Today I put in about 15 live plants (Anubias nana in a pot) multiple java ferns, jungle vals, and some pennywort. I also took half of the filter media from the 10 gal. as well as the 2 bags of ceramic rings from the 10 gal. and put them inside the FX4. I picked up a bottle of TSS Plus today and added it to the tank thinking I was going to get the fish today but now I can't get them until tomorrow. I have read that the bacteria in TSS will die if there is no ammonia source. I am assuming the .5 ppm in the tank currently is enough to keep the bacteria alive until tomorrow when I get some fish in there.
It's a native tank and tomorrow I am adding 2 bluegill and 2 yellow perch, they are small fish just a couple inches each........

 

Yeah 0.5 is fine for TSS, if you only ever dose that then all that will happen is the bacterial colony or biofilter will build to that, any more added via fish load will cause a minI cycle until it catches up

IIrc TSS is safe dosage upto around 4ppm before it starts harming and as long as there is ammonia of some sorts it will be fine

 

Thanks, that’s kind of what I figured but I have no idea with the plants and seeded media if the, or how quickly, the ammonia could be consumed.

 

Bacteria doesn’t need feeding every day either but not sure how this differs during early cycle

I’m sure a day won’t hurt with a bit in there anyway.

 

So far so good. A week after adding the fish I have tested my water and it tested 0,0,10. I am going to test it one more time next week (14 days after the TSS) and assuming it is still good I will slowly start to add some more fish.

 

Very good! Sounds like everything worked as it should.