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]

Why must be 2 sponge filter and not 1 or 3 ?

And what's the reason for max airflow ? I thou BB cannot withstand too high water current ?

cause i want 2 cycled filter for my tank
no particular reason for max airflow. BB can withstnad water current alright, else they would have died when I fill the tank with water.

1 Question -> Without the heterotrophic bacteria colony, doesn't it means that when GFs are added, the waste generated won't be broken down and thus the BB ( autotrophic ) will still die off due to lack of inorganic ammonia ?

which is why i said i dun have the colony.... what do you think can be done?

About the stocking issue. theoretically you can stuff as many goldfish as you want in a small tank provided the filter is up to it and water change is carried out diligently. however practically there are limitations to a filter.

There is not ideal stocking level. Usual figure such as 1GF to 10gals are general guidelines. If you are confident enough, you can always stock higher.

The above points are for keeping the fish alive only. If you are concerned about other issues (eg growth, health ), that's a totally different ball game...

Another guideline we usually see on the web is that cycling will take 1 month. again this depends on many factors.