Cycling with Seeded media

[Stussi613]

I picked up some foam pads and bio max rings from garnpet tonight (thanks!!), and put them in my filter to try to speed up the cycle period in my new 60 gal.  Anybody have an idea how long the cycle would take?  Is it a good idea to still add a few guppies to the tank with the seeded media?

[KLKelly]

If there are no fish in there you will have to 'feed' the biobugs.  You can use pure household ammonia (found mine at home hardware) - this would be safest.  Pure ammonia doesn't have scents or surfactants.

I wouldn't use guppies or fish because you just take the chance of introducing diseases and parasites.

I discovered with my cycle crashes that its best to use filter media from tanks that are not highly planted - in the case of a cichlid tank (plantless for the most part) this is the most successful for a quick cycle.

[Stussi613]

I'm not sure if this means it's cycling faster than I thought it would, but got home today and did a water test and got the following values:

PH - 8.0
Ammonia - 0.25
Nitrite - 0.0
Nitate 5.0

I put 10 Zebra Danios in the tank a few days ago and they seem to be thriving...in fact they don't seem to ever stop swimming.  The good thing about adding them is that it was a test run for my rockwork, one of the danio's got caught between a rock and the glass and I saw it when I was putting the background on the tank.

[dan2x38]

Those reading are a good sign for sure. Thing about a cichlid tank is the high pH. If the NH3 goes up then it becomes highly toxic at higher pH levels. You need to monitor that closely. I and many other on this forum have used and use prime by SeaChem as our water conditioners. It detoxes NH3, NO2 & NO3. It also removes heavy metals. Yoy can safly dose up to 5 times the rcommended does which is 5mil (1 capful) per 50 gallons 1mil/10 gal. It is highly concentrated. It is a good bang for buck too.

Good choice of fish they are hardy and very active. If they start to get sluggish check your water right away. Have to see some pics soon?

[Stussi613]

I picked up a bottle of prime at BA earlier today, actually.

I've got pics, but I want to wait until I have my cichlids in the tank before I post them 

Those reading are a good sign for sure. Thing about a cichlid tank is the high pH. If the NH3 goes up then it becomes highly toxic at higher pH levels. You need to monitor that closely. I and many other on this forum have used and use prime by SeaChem as our water conditioners. It detoxes NH3, NO2 & NO3. It also removes heavy metals. Yoy can safly dose up to 5 times the rcommended does which is 5mil (1 capful) per 50 gallons 1mil/10 gal. It is highly concentrated. It is a good bang for buck too.

Good choice of fish they are hardy and very active. If they start to get sluggish check your water right away. Have to see some pics soon?

[KLKelly]

With a ph of 8.0 you will want to keep ammonia below .50 (assuming a temp of 76 or lower) or anything after that can be toxic ammonia.  It can burn fish also.

What are you going to do if you show nitrites?  This is toxic to fish and poisons them.  freshwater aquarium salt protects them (1tsp/gallon).

Hopefully you won't show nitrites.

Prime detoxes .6 of ammonia per 24 hour period and is safe to double dose and won't affect your ph.

[J]

Prime seems in my experience to throw off the API test kits anyways when there are levels of ammonia/nitrite/nitrate. give er 24 hours to do its work then your tests should be accurate, just my experience.

[washefuzzy]

I find the tank is ready to use right away and you do need a few fish in there to keep it going. But only a few fish for the first couple of weeks or month and feed lightly. Works for me and the fish 

[Stussi613]

I haven't put any prime in it yet, I just bought it in case the levels spiked and I had to bring down the ammonia.  I'm going to test again tomorrow and see where things are. 

The Danio's are still doing good, eating well and no issues with lethargy etc.  It's really too bad that I'm going to end up getting rid of them...they certainly are busy fish.

Prime seems in my experience to throw off the API test kits anyways when there are levels of ammonia/nitrite/nitrate. give er 24 hours to do its work then your tests should be accurate, just my experience.

[dan2x38]

Prime is an awesome product. It does not remove the NH3 it detoxes it. It stillleaves it available to the bio-filter to feed the bacteria. As mentioned you can get false readings. Here is a link to Seachem's website: http://www.seachem.com/support/FAQs/Prime.html

Silly question... you did use a water treatment to break down the chloramine? That is if you live in the City of Ottawa. Alymer and Gatineau use chlorine.

[Stussi613]

I used this:

     

I bought the prime after going to see garnpet and having him recommend it.  Still haven't used it, the Danio's are fine.  I'll test again tomorrow to see what is going on with the water.

Silly question... you did use a water treatment to break down the chloramine? That is if you live in the City of Ottawa. Alymer and Gatineau use chlorine.

[KLKelly]

Don't forget to test Nitrites.  This poisons the fish and is easily detoxified with freshwater safe aquarium salt (1 tsp per gallon).  Prime isn't a substitute for salt when dealing with nitrites.

Prime detoxes .60 of ammonia and won't affect your ph.  Lots of people use various conditioners.  Prime was a life saver for me during our initial cycling phase because of high PH.  I also used Amquel+ because it detoxified more ammonia, but I wouldn't use this as a conditioner for an african tank because it can affect kh/ph (It did with my tanks which is what I wanted).

[Stussi613]

I'll test for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate again.  I think I'm safe on the PH and hardness since I used Aragonite for substrate.

Don't forget to test Nitrites.  This poisons the fish and is easily detoxified with freshwater safe aquarium salt (1 tsp per gallon).  Prime isn't a substitute for salt when dealing with nitrites.

Prime detoxes .60 of ammonia and won't affect your ph. 

[KLKelly]

Sorry - I edited my post.  Here is a link to ammonia toxicity tables so you can find out if your ammonia is toxic or not.

Did I already link this? http://dataguru.org/misc/aquarium/AmmoniaTox.html
Sorry if its a duplicate post.

[Stussi613]

No, you hadn't posted that link on my thread, and I really appreciate it.  At this point I'm a few stages below the toxicity level, the tank is 79 degrees right now, so I'm good.

Sorry - I edited my post.  Here is a link to ammonia toxicity tables so you can find out if your ammonia is toxic or not.

Did I already link this? http://dataguru.org/misc/aquarium/AmmoniaTox.html
Sorry if its a duplicate post.

[dan2x38]

I'll test for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate again.  I think I'm safe on the PH and hardness since I used Aragonite for substrate.

Off thread topic but since you mentioned it... did you find the link to DIY pH/KH/GH mixture for African tanks? Brine has posted it here somewhere.

It will also help with the potential nitrite toxity issues too since it uses salt.

[KLKelly]

Dan - I can check with Betty/dataguru but I think its a certain salt.  I think she told me that depending on the amount of calcium chloride I used that it would help with nitrite issues I was having.  We still used rock salt from Loblaws (cheaper than BigAls) just in case because of how high the nitrites were.

I reharden my RO water for my four goldfish tanks based on their ideal conditions with help from dataguru and her contacts.  Its a mix of pure calcium chloride (chips bought at pool store), magnesium/epsom salt (bought at pharmacy), potassium chloride (cheap - pharmacist special ordered) and baking soda.  I have a gh of ten drops with this recipe and I'm keeping KH around 8 drops (less than African levels) with her KH calculator http://dataguru.org/misc/aquarium/calKH.asp.  This one won't work with RO water though - I use another calculator for starting from 0.  City water I think has a starting KH of around 3 doesn't it?

I'd love to see the recipe that you note Brine found.

We should have a thread on rehardening water and how to do it cheaply.  The stuff at the aquarium stores is expensive and I'm glad I'm not forced to use cichlid buffer anymore.  With one tank I guess it wouldn't be that bad per month but would add up over a year.

I'm having trouble finding trace elements that don't have added fertalizer or insane potassium levels.  My tanks have no plants except for one (thanks btw the hornwart is still alive   )

[Stussi613]

Here is the recipe and link...thanks to Brine.

**********************************
Here is the recipe I use....




If you wish to supplement your water to make it more "African", a very general recipe is:

- 1 Tablespoon Epsom Salt
- 1 Tablespoon Coarse Salt
- 1 Teaspoon Baking Soda

Per 5 gallons.  This does:

- Epsom Salt = Magnesium Sulfate: This increases gH, or General Hardness of the water.
- Coarse Salt = Sodium Chloride:  This is plain old salt.  What you need here is something pure, without the additives that go into "Table Salt".  Coarse Salt, Kosher Salt, etc are all the same.  Coarse Salt can be bought in bulk from Bulk Barn for very little (actually, all of these can be bought there)
- Baking Soda = Sodium Bicarbonate:  This increases pH and kH.  What's great about this is you pretty much can't overdose...Baking Soda will never raise your pH over 8.2.

http://ovas.ca/index.php?topic=29269.0

[KLKelly]

I wonder if thats the ideal recipe.  I don't know cichlids but table salt isn't part of the recipe worked out for goldfish to increase water hardness.  I wonder why.  Do you mind if I ask for input from the person who helped me? Or just leave all alone

[Stussi613]

Just pulled Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate readings, and the survey says:

Ammonia = 0.0
Nitrite     = 0.0
Nitrate    = 0.0

I'm a little bit concerned by the drop in nitrates to 0, but the fish are doing fine.  I'm going to keep things status quo for another week and keep testing every couple of days...the fact that the ammonia and nitrate were up a couple of days ago makes me think that some cycle action was going on, but with everything being at 0 now I'm a little nervous.