A Complete Cycle - With Pond Water Assist

[Jonathan Kadish NYC AA Chair]

I am fishless cycling my indoor 100 liter aquarium with a 100 liters of media. I have heard in this forum that pond water will assist the process along. There just so happens to be a Koi pond in the garden of my building so figured that will be a good source of bacteria. The purpose of this discussion is to document the progress of cycling with daily measurements and get any suggestion to try to speed things along. I will update with measurements when I am home to do so.

Starting point is 100 liters of NYC tap water with a PH of 7.0 treated with 2 teaspoons of ClorAm-X to neutralize the chlorine. The water has been in the tank and growbed while i tested the system for a week prior to the start of cycling.

Day 1 added 6ml of NH3 and 600ml of pond water (PH 6.8 | NH3 0ppm | N2 0ppm | N3 +80ppm)

Day 2 Added 1300 ml pond water then tested [PH 6.8 | NH3 1ppm | N2 0ppm | N3 3ppm] then added 3ml of NH3

Hit up my youtube channel if you want to see the system

https://www.youtube.com/user/AquaponicsNYC

[TCLynx]

Almost there then.

A few more doses will probably get you to the point you can dose to between 1-2 ppm ammonia and have both ammonia and nitrite to 0 within 24 hours.

[Jonathan Kadish NYC AA Chair]

I added 3 fancy goldfish on Jan 20th. It was interesting to watch them acclimate for an hour or two the first day, but now they are happy and entertaining my cats :)

Cycle complete

[TCLynx]