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I just want to make sure my math is correct.

To dose a 1000 gallons to 2 PPM you add 1.6 teaspoons or around 1/4 ounce. Is this correct?

If someone could please verify. Seems kind of low to me.

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Uh, need to know of what your are adding 1.6 teaspoons of?  Is this Sylvia's kit?  Or are use using clear ammonia, in which case we would need to know the %.

 

Hopefully Sylvia can chime in here since I've not seen the instructions for her kit nor do I know the exact makeup of the "powdered ammonia" in use.

 

FYI it doesn't take much ammonia to overdose.  Put it this way, I managed to cycle up a 600 gallon system with less than 500 ml of aged hummonia per dose and aged pee only has a small % of ammonia.

Oddly it doesn't give the percentage on the bottle. As for ingredients it list Ammonium hydroxide and says it contains no phosphorous. 

 

Just checked and it has 2.5% ammonia hydroxide.
TCLynx said:

Uh, need to know of what your are adding 1.6 teaspoons of?  Is this Sylvia's kit?  Or are use using clear ammonia, in which case we would need to know the %.

 

Hopefully Sylvia can chime in here since I've not seen the instructions for her kit nor do I know the exact makeup of the "powdered ammonia" in use.

 

FYI it doesn't take much ammonia to overdose.  Put it this way, I managed to cycle up a 600 gallon system with less than 500 ml of aged hummonia per dose and aged pee only has a small % of ammonia.

Well, first I would make sure that it is clear and not cloudy.  Make sure it has no added fragrance, soap or detergent.  Shake it up and make sure it doesn't get sudzy.

 

Then I might suggest adding the 1/4 ounce you mention to your system and let it mix for a few hours, then test the ammonia level with your test kit.  Write down how much you dosed and what ammonia level you got and you will have a baseline for future dosing.  If say you only get to like .25 or .5 ppm ammonia on that dose then you know you will need to dose more.  If it gets you to 4 ppm then you know you might get away with dosing a little less.

 

Sylvia has lately discovered that some types of test kits can be overwhelmed if you were to dose way too much and they will read 0 instead of off the chart if you manage an extreme over dose. 

 

Seems for the clear ammonia, it may be a matter of drops per gallon of water.  5 ml in 60 gallons for 4 ppm or something so it doesn't take much.

 

Here is a blog post Sylvia did lately on the subject.

missing ammonia

I went back to my testing notes for the Clear Ammonia and after figuring out how much I used to get to 4 ppm (5 ml in 60 gallons) we calculated that one drop in 8 cups of water was equivalent.  Alan put in the drop, stirred and gave me a look that said “this is never going to work”.  We ran the test and slowly but surely the most beautiful shade of green started to appear in the test tube!  We added a second drop to the 8 cups of water and tested again, and the green was darker

Thanks TCL, I dosed 1/4 ounce and let the pump run a few times. When I tested for ammonia it read 0.50 ppm.

I let it run for three more hours and tested again. 0.00 ppm reading? I just dosed 1/2 ounce and will check it in an hour.

 

The system has been running for a few weeks. I overdosed early on so I have done a couple 1/3 water changes and more than tripled the grow bed area. I had an ammonia reading of 6 ppm two days ago. When I checked this morning it was 0. Nitrites are still pegged out but not reading any nitrates anymore. Nitrates never read higher than 40ppm.

 

How long will the nitrating bacteria live without an ammonia source? 

 

Ok so if your Nitrites are still really high, I would recommend sticking with a low daily dose of ammonia until you see the nitrites drop below 1.  As soon as your nitrites drop below 1 you should be able to start dosing to some where between 1 and 4 ppm of ammonia again and see when you are able to dose to that level and have both ammonia and nitrite drop to 0 within 24 hours, then you will be cycled up.  Keep an eye on your system pH cause when the nitrite drops the pH may well drop too and you don't want to let it get too low.  I would take action before the pH drops below 6.5.

 

good Luck sounds like you are almost there.

Ok nitrites are finally starting to drop. Still high but looks to be between 2-5ppm(COLORS ARE SO DANG CLOSE)

After I dosed the ammonia last night to 1PPM around 10 O'clock, the level has dropped to 0.25 this morning. (roughly 10 hrs.)

 

I added another 1/2 ounce of ammonia and will check it again tonight. Do you think 1ppm is high enough to dose until the nitrites drop?

I have a lot of plants in the beds now, so I am hoping this is the reason the nitrates have disappeared. Plants are doing pretty good in the outside beds but the plants inside look a little leggy. Long skinny stems with not much foliage. I know I need more light in there.

 

As always, thanks for your help. I will continue with low doses of ammonia until the nitrites drop a little more as you suggested. Patience has not been a virtue of mine but maybe after another week and I can get some fish in there. 

I've had systems where I even quit dosing the ammonia until the nitrite got back below 1 so yes I think 1ppm of ammonia is way plenty until the nitrites drop.

 

Heck the way I cycled my systems up I only dosed to between 1-2 ppm of ammonia and I didn't dose again until I saw it drop to a trace and then I even went several days without dosing at all while I waited for the nitrite spike to subside.  As far as I can tell, still took about the same amount of time to cycle up.

Okay.

 

I have been dosing 1/2 ounce of the 2.5% ammonia for a few days. This only gave me around 0.25 ppm. The nitrites finally fell under 1ppm but there were still no nitrates reading. 

 

I figured the plants were using the nitrates up as they were produced. The plants were not growing very much, other than the onions and cucumbers. I increased the ammonia dose 1 ounce yesterday and took readings this morning.

  • Ammonia - 0ppm
  • Nitrites - 0ppm
  • Nitrates - did not test as there has been no reading in two weeks
  • PH - 7.6

Added another ounce of ammonia (around 10 am) 

8:30pm test results were:

  • Ammonia - 0
  • Nitrites - 0.5
  • PH- 7.2
  • Nitrates 160ppm

Is it normal to have such a big increase in nitrates? I could understand it in a small tank. 

I have increased the run time of the pump by 50% the last couple days. Together with the increased water temperature I think maybe the bacteria were there, just not as active maybe. 

 

 

Sounds like your system has just finished cycling up.  Keep up the small doses of ammonia to keep the bacteria alive until a day or so before you get your fish in.  Hopefully your plants will now take off and get to using up those high nitrates.

I was hoping you would say that.

 

I think I need more plants. There are 18 onion, 9 pepper, 5 squash, 5 cucumber, 40 broccoli, 3 cabbage, 2sq feet of mustard, 2 strawberry plants and some spinach and lettuce seedlings. Everything has turned much greener though.

 

I found a local source (1 hour ride) for Bluegill and Catfish fingerling. 2-4" bluegill 35 cents / hybrid bluegill 80 cents/ 4-6" channel cats 65 cents. Carolina fish hatchery

 

How big is your system?  I would caution to go easy on the fish numbers for your first season.  It really doesn't take a huge amount of fish to provide plenty of nutrients for the plants.

 

I've been stocking one catfish per 20 gallons of gravel bed (with at least 10 gallons of fish tank) or for bluegill I've got 1 bluegill per 10 gallons of gravel with at least 5 gallons of fish tank.

1200 gallon fish tank, almost 600 gallons of grow beds. Only around 900 gallons in the FT now. Will be adding more GBs this week and hope to add 300-400 gallons of raft bed.

Thinking about adding some minnows to the raft tank when complete. Or maybe some of the redclaws everyone has been talking about.

I think I will start with 50 bluegill and maybe get some catfish after the system runs for a few months. What do you think?

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