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System Up?

Well, started fishless cycling a small indoor system . Using hydroton as the biofilter, lots of airstones. Added 1ml ammonia / day untill NH3,NO3 and NO2 levels started coming up. Now, that took about 4 weeks to get NO2 established. At that point I stopped using ammonia as it was into the 8ppm range and did not come down to .25ppm for another 3 weeks. NO3 and NO2 were up high, but with nothing to be affected I was not worried. As of today NH3 is .25ppm, NO2 is .25ppm, NO3 is 10ppm.

I am using water from our local creek as well water is way to hard. Even so, the creek water is pH 8.5. I used muriatic acid to bring it down to 8,0. After a couple of days it was starting to rise again, so I planted a couple of peat pellets in the hydroton. The pH has been a steady 7.6 since then.

A question has been bugging me though, does anyone know if hydroton has the ability to trap ammonia and release it over time. I'm asking because even though I stopped using it, my ammonia levels were very high, and took 3 weeks come come down to a safe range for introducing fish. Which by the way will be going in over the weekend.

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Permalink Reply by TCLynx on February 17, 2012 at 4:49pm

It just takes time for the bio filter to cycle up. You will still need to keep a close eye on your water quality when you add the fish for a while but you are unlikely to see huge spikes unless you really over do it on your fish numbers or feeding.