Ammonia discussions

What about using zeolite on the rain water before you put it into your tank? You will just have to monitor when the zeolite gets saturated.

 

AquaS, do not get me started again! hehe

No, I settled on RO. Rain is too intermittent in any case.(availability) Zeolite also cost money, so what the heck, spend it on RO. Much less hassle, no regenerating etc.

 

I did test my tap water with my kit and I got a ZERO reading on Ammonia, Nitrate and Nitrite! I'm very happy that my tap water is safe.

 

Just another thought to discuss. In my opinion, your NH3 NH4, should never be zero. (in your tank, that is) I know everyone is striving towards it, but you must have some in the water column, to sustain your bacterial colony. If there is not enough NH3, the colony size will shrink and not be able to handle a sudden bio load increase.

What do you say?

 

You could buy RO water or move to cpt. Just kidding

 

It seems like there is some disagreement on readings of a cycled filter. If NH4 is below 0.5mg/l, NO2 is zero and NO3 is above zero, it indicates to me that the nitrogen cycle has been established. The other school of thought is that NO2 must also give a reading, otherwise it has not spiked yet and therefore the cycle is not fully active and the filter is not producing NO2. If that is true, where does the NO3 come from?

See photo.


I just want to make sure of my facts, before I start singing Microbe Lift's praises.

 

I sent the below to Tom.K via PM, as I believe he was over complicating the whole issue. He replied and asked me to put it here for everyone.

Once NH3 has reached equilibrium in your tank, meaning you have zero readings, you have pretty much reached the maximum population of denitrifying bacteria that your filter will handle... meaning that there is no more space in the filter for more bacteria. (This usually takes up to about 6 months because they populate in your substrate as well). The unforseen circumstance (over feed, dead fish) will cause the spike regardless of whether your bacteria is multiplying or not... in actual fact, if your filter is established, and you are getting Zero NH3 reading, then any spike that may occur will happen suddenly, and get dealt with fairly quickly. Meaning the spike may only last a few hours as the bacteria will get rid of it. Albeit as a slower pace, but at the maximum pace that your filter will allow.

Let me try explain it this way.... you have a series of buckets stacked on top of one another. They all have a 20mm tap at their bases. The top bucket is filled and the tap is opened slowly over a period of a few hours. Let's call the first bucket Ammonia, and the tap in the base the Ammonia breaking down bacteria. The second bucket being called Nnitrite, with it's own tap being Nitrite breaking bacteria. The last bucket is called Nitrate. This bucket has 2 taps. One we will call Plants, and one we will call Water Changes.

You fill the top bucket with a hose pipe. You leave the hose running constantly and the water flows through the taps. What eventually will happen is you will reach a balance where the top bucket will always be empty because the tap is finally opened fully. The same will happen in the second bucket. The third bucket's taps are very small, because the Plant tap has a very small effect on nitrates, and the only way to help relieve the pressure is to open the water change tap.

I know this image sounds really trivial, but bear with me. The taps on the ammonia bucket and nitrite bucket are open FULL. They do not have the capacity to let any more water through. However if the first bucket is empty, and the second bucket is empty, your system is considered to be in equilibrium. If you increase the tap size (or in other words increase the filter size) you are also thus increasing the flow of water entering the system in the hose as well aren't you (more filter = higher filtration rate does it not!). So you still in equilibrium.

Now a fish dies... or someone throws in 20litres of water into the first bucket from another source. Immediately your first bucket called Ammonia will fill up, but the tap will still only let through so much water at a time, (or your filter will only filter out so much ammonia at a time). USUALLY you will find that the second bucket will fill up as well, (meaning you should get a nitrite spike too) but in practice this doesn't always happen. Purely because whatever the ammonia tap (bacteria) was letting through pre-spike and post-spike is the same.... it would just take slightly longer for the high ammonia concentration to work through.

A Water change can obviously be conducted in bucket 1 and bucket 2. Thus when you have the ammonia spike, a water spike will effectively be the same as removing that excess water that has been dumped into bucket one.

I may have oversimiplified the whole process, but I think we tend to overcomplicate things at times.

 

Thanks Zoom. You raised a few things that one seem to forget. Bit pressed for time right now, but will surely come discuss.

As far as 'complication' goes, remember, this is my hobby and I get immense joy from studying all the aspects and making sure I understand how it all fit together. So yes, I agree, over complicated for one, source of joy for another! Do not drop me now! I need input and discussing of the various ideas.

See ya later...

 

Just one quick question. The pic in #26, would you say the filter is cycled, or not. Reason I want to know. This is a 'sponge' filter on a power head. The round, longish type. Layer of filter material around, with bio balls in the middle.

I seeded this filter a week and a bit ago and just left the tank for a week. There was fish in before, so the ammonia was present, to high. I seeded it with Microbe Lift GFCI and Special Blend. A week later, I tested it for the first time and that was the reading. Now remember, there was no NO2, NO3 when I seeded. That is why I am excited. Microbe Lift seems to be living up to its claims of cycling a tank in one week!

Unfortunately, I did not measure frequently and never witnessed an NO2 spike.

 

I would say that is damn close to being cycled.

There is still a little ammonia in there 0.5mg/l. So yes, you almost there.

 

I do not know how the color shows on your screen, but live it is very much lighter green than the 0.5mgl. I would guess 0.25mg/l.

 

same-a-ting

 

Live you can see clearly that NH4 is lighter than on the scale. I would guess 0.25mg/l.

I will not start singing Microbe Lift's praises just yet. The zero reading on NO2 is bothering me. I am going to do a huge WC now, get the NO3 down to about nothing and then see if it increase again.

 

Zero NO2 makes perfect sense to me. Read my bucket story again.

 

OK Zoom, lets tackle your PM to me. First of all, no, do not worry, you did not burst my bubble. I am still as enthusiastic about the subject as ever.:blink1:

Let us tackle NH3 first.

I do not agree with you here, on two counts.

First, I still maintain you can not reach zero.How close you can get to zero is open for debate, but if zero, it means you have no fish in the tank and nothing that is decaying. If you do have these things in the tank, it will take time to reach the filter and therefore must be present in the water column. It will also mean that there is no more 'food' for your bacteria and it will start dying off. I therefore argue that you want NH3 in the water, but at lower than mildly toxic levels. Then you have a filter that is in equilibrium and healthy on that level.

Secondly, reaching zero readings, does not mean you reached the maximum population of denitrifying bacteria that your filter will handle. It simply means that your colony will not grow further, whether there is capacity or not, as the source of nutrients has run out. There may be still lots of capacity left, but your bio load is too small to allow further growth. The other side of the coin is, if you ran out of capacity, you will not reach zero either, as your levels will rise.

Therefore, I believe a healthy water column should contain NH4, at a level below 0.5mg/l for most fish, depending your pH. At 7pH or lower, you could even afford higher levels of NH4 and it will not be a train smash. It can serve as a sign that something is wrong and you could act in time or sooner than what you would have if you do not know what your levels mean, or even not monitor it.

Agreed.
Unforeseen circumstance is just that. Unforeseen. Nothing you can do about that. Hopefully you have spare capacity left in your filter, but bacteria do not grow in a few hours. Hopefully also, your normal levels is low and you have spare capacity between your low level and the level where it becomes toxic. If your normal level is 0.25mg/l, your pH is 7pH, then you can spike up to 2mg/l with no effect on your fish whatsoever and even to 10mg/l, which is harmful with long-term exposure only.

Key is therefore a low NH4 normal level and pH of 7 to 7.5. Even 8pH, but if you then spike to 10mg/l, you are in deep doo doo. So, if you understand the key, what is complicated about it?

The rest of your bucket system, I can live with. NO2 can be zero, as I have said earlier, as it just mean the bacteria for that component is optimum for the amount produced from NH3. I however still want to make sure when I cycle a filter, that I do get the initial spike of NO2 and that it then decrease to zero.

NO3 we know must be handled by waterchange. There is the challenge in future to build a anaerobic filter to handle that, but for me, that is way in future.

Thanks for debating it with me, it is appreciated. There is no point in arguing with yourself!

 

@Tom I do agree with you on the above statement. I am sure that if it was possible to measure ammonia levels at the filter outlet it would me way lower than at the filter inlet... Way lower meaning micrograms! It makes sence in that there is waste on the tank bottom and in the water. Remember the fish are doing their thing in the water also! I want to lower my ph to below 7, ideal being 6,5. Any NATURAL way to do this? This will help me if I do have a unforseen spike..

 

@Spawn
I doubt that there is any benefit below 7pH, as far as ammonia toxicity goes. Also, do not go to a pH that is not suited to your fish. I am under the impression that most fish is comfortable at 7pH and higher, but you do get lots of exeptions though. Also, 7pH is the optimum for bacteria performance.

Look for Cools32's introduction thread. He gave a good YouTube link explaining the natural ways to bring pH down. Just remember to do it slowly, as in over a month. You are not mentioning what your pH is right now, but I imagine it is no train smash that must be rectified within hours.

 

So the plot thickens. Turns out that Temp, pH, TAN (total ammonium nitrogen (NH4 plus NH3)) and TDS all plays a role in toxicity. Will not bore you with it yet, but will give a summary once I can do so meaningful. Also discovered a nice calculator that takes all 4 variables into account. Bottom line is, manipulate all 4 as far as possible to give you as large a buffer as possible. Actually 5 if you count WC as well.

To wet your appetite, here is the calculator.

 

I could just add that the other factors, like temp and TDS, plays a minor role and can be ignored. pH on the other hand, does play n biggish role. The ultimate goal is a TAN reading as close as possible to zero. This means filter capacity...

yeah yeah, you told me so, but I never argued. Still is interesting.

 

OK, I proved myself wrong. I argued that a zero reading on NH3 is not possible, as the bacteria colony will then die. Well, my new 4ft setup proved me wrong. I added more capacity to my filters, by adding another external canister. Seeded with Microbe Lift Special Blend and GFCI (Gel Filter Cartridge Inoculant) The result is that on day 8, I could not detect any NH3 anymore. On day 9, NO2 also disappeared. NO3, also came down drastically on day 9, which I do not understand, but will ponder and investigate later.

So, my apologies to @Zoom and others, NH3 could be zero!

OK, so now, what changed? The conclusion I come to, is that I previously could not get to zero, because my capacity were too small. I thought I have this super capacity, because it was a small tank, 90lt, and my NO2 readings were zero. Turned out that I was at full capacity, all the NH3 my filter could possibly convert to NO2 was converted and then that NO2 was all converted to NO3.

So, what is my new argument? hehe.

I believe that I this time do have spare capacity. I however can not use it until the NH3 increase for some reason, like increase of fish or some other mishap, like something rotting in the tank. Then bacteria will have more 'food' and will start multiplying. Once max capacity is reached, I will start seeing measurable quantities of NH3 again. Only then will I know there is a problem. Once the problem is sorted, the "food source', NH3, will drop and bacteria will die off again, when a zero reading is achieved once again.

Conclusion:
Spare capacity in your filter does not safeguard you from a mishap and sudden peak in ammonia. But a lower pH does! You will pick up that NH3 is climbing. If you measure regular enough, you will have ample time to correct the situation before toxicity become critical. I am talking of a pH of 7 or below, 6.5pH being ideal for my community tank. 8pH definitely rob you of this safeguard!