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.

[HappyBuddha]

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.

Thanks for the write up!

Since you have ammonia bicarbonate, would you consider giving it a try to cultivate green water. It seems BB are living things too and they accepted ammonia bicarbonate. So maybe algae would too? To compare, maybe you can cultivate 2 seperate containers; one with ammonia bicarbonate and the other with organic wastes. In this light, I kinda wished you have also cycled another sponge filter with organize wastes, just to compare the results with the other.

[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.

[jowy_ham]

put in 2 sponge filter. run at max airflow

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 ?

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

Wow, interesting experiment but :

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 ?

1 more Question on cycling and BB and stocking :

By rite, we should have 50-100 litres of water per fish ( in regardless of size ) but in the space scarce of SG HDB flats, how to affort 50-100 litres of water ( 2ft x 2ft x 0.5ft ( 50litres ) OR x 0.9ft ( 100 litres ) tank ) just for 1 goldfish. Therefore I think most Bros will over-stock -> correct me if I'm wrong.

By over-stocking, maybe we are putting in 2-3 GFs per 100 litres, therefore we would need a higher amount of BB to break down all the waste generated but does this perception/assumption really works ?

A sited example for us to think abt : 1GF/100litres ( maybe 1 sponge filter is enough ), over-stock to 4GF/100litres or even 6GF/100litres.

Does increasing the amount of sponge filter to 4 or 6 really helps ?
Please kindly ignore the space constraint in the tank to put 4 or 6 sponge filters at the moment.

I know how to check when a tank/tub is cycled, but usually how long does it takes ? for an example of 1GF/100 litres of water.


Appreciate if someone could kindly enlighten me on the above issue

[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.