How much pee?

[Jeremiah Robinson]

I've looked around and haven't found any guidelines on how much pee to add to a new system.  For instance, if I want 1 ppm in a 100 gallon system (to use round numbers), how many cups of pee is that?

My system is actually much larger than 100 gallons which is why I want to get it right the first time rather than experimenting.  Large water changes will be challenging.

[Alex Veidel]

I'm not sure if you can actually get an exact quantity, due to everyone's diet and bodily functions differing from one person to the next. What you want to do is store some urine in a bottle for a week or two. This gives the pee time to convert to ammonia. After that, put a little in your system (like a table spoon) and let it distribute. Then take a reading. Keeping adding until you get the appropriate amount.

[Vlad Jovanovic]

Yep, but 100ml of humonia in 100 US gallons ought to get you to around the 1ppm range. Or close enough for AP hand-grenades

BUT DON'T GO ADDING FRESH URINE PLEEEEASE. Fresh urine is urea, and an ammonia test kit will not, and can not register it...Which means that most folks take a whizz in their sysem, test for NH4/3...don't see any...and since they don't see the desired reading, just keep adding more and more fresh urine...Nothing happens for a while...

What then happens though... is once all that urine converts to ammonia (and it will), you have a stinky mess with ammonia levels so high that they are now toxic to the bacteria that you are trying to cultivate.

Age the urine in a sealed bottle for 3 to 4 weeks. let it hydrolyse to ammonia in the bottle and not in your system ...(it'll do that all by itself, no intervention is necessary on your part, unless you count patience). Then add your 100ml to your 100 gallons...let the water circulate well, then test...

It took me between 7.5 and 9 litres in an 18,000 litre system to get to about 1.5ppm or.

[Jeremiah Robinson]

Thanks guys.  Presuming Vlad doesn't drink ammonia I'll work with the 100 ml per 100 gallons rule :)

Also, is it really 3-4 weeks?  Most people seem to say a week, or two.

Jer...

Vlad Jovanovic said:

Yep, but 100ml of humonia in 100 US gallons ought to get you to around the 1ppm range. Or close enough for AP hand-grenades

BUT DON'T GO ADDING FRESH URINE PLEEEEASE. Fresh urine is urea, and an ammonia test kit will not, and can not register it...Which means that most folks take a whizz in their sysem, test for NH4/3...don't see any...and since they don't see the desired reading, just keep adding more and more fresh urine...Nothing happens for a while...

What then happens though... is once all that urine converts to ammonia (and it will), you have a stinky mess with ammonia levels so high that they are now toxic to the bacteria that you are trying to cultivate.

Age the urine in a sealed bottle for 3 to 4 weeks. let it hydrolyse to ammonia in the bottle and not in your system ...(it'll do that all by itself, no intervention is necessary on your part, unless you count patience). Then add your 100ml to your 100 gallons...let the water circulate well, then test...

It took me between 7.5 and 9 litres in an 18,000 litre system to get to about 1.5ppm or.

[Pat James]

I AM the biological load on my fish tank, which my wife likes to call the swimming pool. If I am at home, I either pee in a bottle at night or into the pool directly when I take the dogs out.  (I can't seem to get the dogs to pee in the pool too...they want to pee on anything else..), That being said, I do NOT have any inc=vestment in fish at this point. I am not counting the 50 or so minnows or the 400+ crayfish. None of these are showing any signs of distress. Today I fed the crawdads with some fish I had in the freezer.

[Vlad Jovanovic]

It generally takes a couple of weeks...but no, I tell people 3 to 4 weeks out of laziness (both mine and theirs)...You can test the pH, when it's reached 9 or above...it's done. Also, if you want to speed things up you can pour a bit of "old" humonia into your bottle of fresh urea. This tends to cut the time down significantly...or, you can also speed up the process by adding a bit of hydroxide to the urine. (Potassium hydroxide [KOH] is easily made from rain water and the ashes of hardwood trees...Seriously, it's very simple to do and is handy for all sorts of stuff). 

But, short of using one of these "tricks", I don't think I've ever gotten a bottle of urea to convert to humonia in just one week.

Pat, you can probably get away with doing that because you have like a gazzilion gallon system. You and all 101 Dalmations probably couldn't make a dent in that big 'ol pool FT 

Jeremiah Robinson said:

Thanks guys.  Presuming Vlad doesn't drink ammonia I'll work with the 100 ml per 100 gallons rule

Also, is it really 3-4 weeks?  Most people seem to say a week, or two.

Jer...

Vlad Jovanovic said:

Yep, but 100ml of humonia in 100 US gallons ought to get you to around the 1ppm range. Or close enough for AP hand-grenades

BUT DON'T GO ADDING FRESH URINE PLEEEEASE. Fresh urine is urea, and an ammonia test kit will not, and can not register it...Which means that most folks take a whizz in their sysem, test for NH4/3...don't see any...and since they don't see the desired reading, just keep adding more and more fresh urine...Nothing happens for a while...

What then happens though... is once all that urine converts to ammonia (and it will), you have a stinky mess with ammonia levels so high that they are now toxic to the bacteria that you are trying to cultivate.

Age the urine in a sealed bottle for 3 to 4 weeks. let it hydrolyse to ammonia in the bottle and not in your system ...(it'll do that all by itself, no intervention is necessary on your part, unless you count patience). Then add your 100ml to your 100 gallons...let the water circulate well, then test...

It took me between 7.5 and 9 litres in an 18,000 litre system to get to about 1.5ppm or.