Cycling Sponge Filter With Ammonia Bicarbonate, Doing it the fishless way Options

[square_guy]

Method:

- Use a 2 gallon tank, put in 2 sponge filter. run at max airflow.
- put in a pinch of ammonia bicarbonate which can be bought from phoon huat.
- "toxic" on Seachem ammonia alert.
- buffer water well.

1 week later:
- "safe" on ammonia alert.
- nitrite is off the chart on test kit.
- nitrate is off the chart on test kit.

Conclusion:
- necesssary bacteria for breaking down both ammonia and nitrite are already present. only issue left is the quantity of such colony.
- is the filter cycled? this have to depend on final stocking ratio and feeding...
- sponge filter is really really fast acting...

ps: this is only for cycling filters, not for kickstarting green water. I suspect it'll not work for green water as the algae is probably targetting organic waste instead of inorganic ammonia.

[square_guy]

I heard from Alvin that it wouldn't work as they have tried it before.

BB are autotrophic, which means they only consume inorganic ammonia. Organic waste must be broken down into inorganic ammonia by heterotrophic bacteria before the autotrophic BB can act on it. Thus we save 1 step. hmm... but this means I do not have the required heterotrophic bacteria colony .........

But anyway, the main reasons I go about this method is
1. reduce cycling time and stress to fish.
2. reduce chance of contamination using organic waste from unclean fish.