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

[Jonathan Kadish NYC AA Chair]

Day 3 [PH 6.6 | NH3 1ppm | N2 0pp, | N3 2ppm] added 3ml NH3

[Jonathan Kadish NYC AA Chair]

Day 4 [PH 6.6 | NH3 2ppm | N2 0ppm | N3 2ppm] nothing added

Beginning to think I need some rocks from the Koi pond or find something like a scrubber pad to get bacteria off the surfaces of the pond and put it in amongst the media. They don't appear to be in the water column.

[Jonathan Kadish NYC AA Chair]

Day 5 No change in chemistry so added this rock which was in the water fall from the Koi pond.

It has a nice slimy bio film coating on most of the surface. Placed it 4 inches deep in the grow

bed so it can breath when the bed drains. Hoping it feeds on the Ammonia.

[Jonathan Kadish NYC AA Chair]

Day 6 No Change in chemistry - buffering PH back up to 7 after reading a study on nitrifying bacteria with PH ranges 7 - 7.5

[Japan Aquaponics - アクアポニックス 日本]

Hey Jonathan,

The nitrifying bacteria do generally prefer a PH of somewhere between 7.3 and 8.0 (depending on whether they are nitrosomonas or notrospira bacteria).  Also note that these bacteria only perform a binary division every 15hrs or so, so their growth will be necessarily a little slow.   Water temperature will also affect the health of the bacteria and their ability to do their jobs... optimal temp is about 28 degrees.  Finally, if you have plenty of oxygen in the system then that will also make it easier for bacteria to do their thing.

On the little system that I have, I used a standard air pump that comes with the inbuilt sponge-type filter.  I have that running in one of the other established systems for a week or more, and then transfer the filter over to the new system when it has been built.  This gets the bacteria into the system quickly, as well as providing a little more aeration.

[RupertofOZ]

Temperature, and the presence of ammonia... will determine your cycling time... more than pH...

[Jonathan Kadish NYC AA Chair]

Thanks guys... I have an air stone going 24/7 in the tank and the ambient temp is 21 and they will have to live with that or I should say I will have to live with how long it takes at that temperature. I will take the PH up to 7.5 over the next couple of days.

[Jonathan Kadish NYC AA Chair]

Day 7 Dare I say there is a hint of nitrite? Or am I just hopeful and impatient?

System                  Tap

.

[Jonathan Kadish NYC AA Chair]

Just hopeful thinking...

Day 8,9,10 No change in tests result other than bringing up the PH to 7.5.

So far It looks like the rock and pond water have not paid off. I'll give it another 4 days and then I'm going to order some living bacteria from an aquarium supply company -  or go down to petco to see what they have.

[Jonathan Kadish NYC AA Chair]

Day 11,12,13 The Bacteria are still elusive, although my nitrite and nitrates indicate trace levels, it may be from the pond water i added initially. Bottled bacteria are my next hope. Heading over to an aquarium shop on Friday to pick up some.

[claude saunders]

It took me 17 days before nitrite showed up - this using Chicago tap water and nothing to accelerate process other than heating water to 76 degF and starting plants right away. But then only 2 days after that to jump right up to 5ppm of nitrites. You may be closer than you think...

[Jonathan Kadish NYC AA Chair]

I have detected trace levels when compared to tap and that continues and the nitrate are indicating something other than 0 maybe as much as 5ppm. I am thinking the pond perhaps has a higher population of nitrite oxidizers than ammonia oxidizers because in the nitrite is 0 and the nitrate is 100. Maybe the rock i brought up had thousands of ammonia oxidizers but millions of nitrite oxidizers. Speculation is all i got right now, but I will wait until day 21 to add the off the shelf stuff. Thanks for the hope!

claude saunders said:

It took me 17 days before nitrite showed up - this using Chicago tap water and nothing to accelerate process other than heating water to 76 degF and starting plants right away. But then only 2 days after that to jump right up to 5ppm of nitrites. You may be closer than you think...