help with cycling

[BARRAMUNDI BRETT'O]

Hi all,just to fill you all in, my system cycled about a month ago and was going great,nice clean water,good plant growth etc i had15 yellow belly(15 to 30 cm) in the 2500L tank a couple of catfish,red claw,shrimp and 1 dozen mussels.The yellow belly ate the caty,s then turned on themselves so no more fish,i added 10 small gold fish but find there is no nitrate present so have reverted to using sea sol until i can get my jade's in a couple of weeks,my question to everyone is will i have to go through the cycling process again as i am not to sure about the current situation with no nitrate reading.I understand 10 gold fish probably wont keep my system going ,so any advice would be appreciated
Ta Brett

[bunya boy]

Brett,
From what I have gleaned from all the info on these forums (and Murray's new DVD) once the system has cycled and the nitrifying bacteria are in residence, it takes a long time for them to disappear. I would suggest that your system will not require the 6 to 8 weeks it originally took to cycle, rather it should return to a stable system very quickly. Once your fish are back in place, I reckon it should start to even out overnight or at most a couple of days. Just keep testing the water and let us know how you go.
Happy New Year,
Ian K

[aussieap]

Hi Brett,
Your system bacteria will be fine, so no worries there. The only problem would be if ur grow media dried out for any length of time.
Are you in Emerald Vic or Qld?

[BARRAMUNDI BRETT'O]

Ta Ian and ausap,everything should be ok going off your info,that would be queensland ausap,happy new year to you both as well.

[Outbackozzie]

Wrong guys.

The bacteria colony will not survive on seasol alone.

IF you want to keep your system running at full power, you will either need to add more fish, or ammonia. Either humonia or urea (be careful!).

Dont expect to be able to run it on 10 gold fish, then add 100 Trout and everything will be ok!

The bacteria colony will dramatically shrink, and will take a couple of weeks to re-establish to a high fish load.


I would just run the system as it is right now, add a splash of seasol a week for nutrients, then 2 weeks before getting new fish, slowly add ammonia - testing every day. This will ensure that it is ready for the new arrivals.

[jack@badflas]

I don't think it will take nearly so long to come back as 2 weeks if a cycle is maintained. The bacteria grow exponentially. My experience is that within a few days the system is back to full strength.

I don't know about any fish but tilapia, but they produce about .1 gram of ammonia per pound of fish per day. You should be able to conservatively use that for any fish as tilapia have a very high output.

Get some diluted pure ammonia, be sure nothing else is in it, and put in enough for 8 hours of how ever many pounds of fish you are going to get. Be sure to account for the dilution level of your ammonia. If it is 10% you'll need 10 grams vs. 1. Test at the end of 8 hours for ammonia, and keep adding it every 8 hours until there is no more ammonia at the end of the 8 hours. That way you'll know in advance how long it takes.

If the biomas of the fish is small compared to the volume of the system, even that should not be needed.

I once set up a 300 gallon kiddie pool to raise prawns. I got 1000 post larvals which weighed about 1/2 gram each. I seeded the pool the same day by cleaning out an aquarium filter from a 40 gallon fish tank. I never got an ammonia spike and had no losses of prawns until they started working on each other...

[BARRAMUNDI BRETT'O]

Thanks for the input guy's,I will pull the goldy's out and give the water a hit with yate's urea,i hope this form of urea is ok?
Bye Brett

[jack@badflas]

Thanks for the input guy's,I will pull the goldy's out and give the water a hit with yate's urea,i hope this form of urea is ok?
Bye Brett

Never used urea, but it would probably work OK. You just need to figure out the bio eqivelent.

[BARRAMUNDI BRETT'O]

G'day Jack@,I originally cycled my system with urea but put way to much into the water in one go ,i gave it about half a cup today.I am yet to test the water,but am going to go real easy on the urea application so as it wont burn my established plants.the yate's urea turns out to be the same as most urea's and is a good pure source(ARGUABLY).All should be fine.
Bye Brett

[Murray]

Brett,
Just get the fish and get them in there mate. There will still be some good bacteria at work. It does not all die off overnight.

Just go for it mate....

Test the water daily once the fish are in and then do a 1/3 water change if necessary, but I feel you will be fine.

Urea is not ideal....get some ammonia from somewhere if you must give it a dose of something.

Chuck in a couple of raw prawns......until the fish come.

See post re UREA.

If it is possible to use something else other than UREA do so.