ADA Aquasoil Preparation

[speedie408]

Originally Posted by mott

Adding old tank water will do nothing for your cycle.

Is this statement your own opinion or a fact? Very curious to know.

[mott]

Very little bacteria live in the water column, they grow and thrive an surfaces ie substrate, filter media etc.. At least that's what I understand.

[vca2004]

Anything from an old tank will help - water, substrate, plants etc. Bacteria will be in the water column as well!! And it's definitely better to start of with say a few thousand CFUs from the water column of an established tank culture, than close to nothing in a new, "sterile" tank.

[vca2004]

BTW, I only had some plants from an established tank and it took me less than 3 weeks to cycle with ADA Aquasoil II.

[speedie408]

Originally Posted by vca2004

Anything from an old tank will help - water, substrate, plants etc. Bacteria will be in the water column as well!! And it's definitely better to start of with say a few thousand CFUs from the water column of an established tank culture, than close to nothing in a new, "sterile" tank.

Bingo!

Exactly my experience and understanding.

[dthb4438]

I have changed all my tanks over to ADA Amazonia II and have had wonderful results. I didn't prep anything. Layed the soil gently into the tank, placed the bag over the soil, put the water in gently and then put every plant I could find (stem plants are better) to help with the ammonia. I changed the water every day, and as much as I could. So I guess you could say, 100% if you want. Within two weeks, the ammonia was down to 0. The plants really like the soil a lot. See my pic of my 55 gal.

[mott]

Originally Posted by vca2004

Anything from an old tank will help - water, substrate, plants etc. Bacteria will be in the water column as well!! And it's definitely better to start of with say a few thousand CFUs from the water column of an established tank culture, than close to nothing in a new, "sterile" tank.

I agree with ya except if you were trying to do a quick cycle with just old tank water it aint gonna do much.

The point is really null anyway because he'll be doing big waterchanges often.

[nismo tetra]

The cycle thing is a weird question with using pre-existing tank matter. With my 20 gallon I used about a bag of old eco-complete that was sitting in a bucket for who knows how long. I rinsed it very well and added a fresh new bag on top. I then added water from a 370 gallon system we have had going for gosh...i would say a decade. I put driftwood with java moss, some giant elodea from out of our pond and 1 amazon sword. I then dosed 5 ml trace, 5ml excel and 1 ml of flourish. The very next day I did a 5 gal water change and threw in a baby blue diamond discus, more elodea from pond, dosed ferts again and added diy co2. 4 days later did another 5 gal water change and tested water, .25 ammonia and .25 nitrite and nitrate was around 50 ppm, GH 14 and KH 3. The very next day I repeated with another 5 gal water change, and added 14 cardinals, 7 brown pencils and 3 undescribed specie of corydora. Added dwarf chain swords, and ozelot sword plant. Dosed all ferts again including some macros this time.

Needless to say, today is the 21st day my tank has been running and I have not lost one plant, fish, shrimp etc. Granted I have added a lot more plants in that time and went to a 50% WC weekly regime with dosing liquid ferts on Fridays and Mondays. My ammonia is 0, my nitrite is 0 my nitrates stay high between 20-50 ppm and my phosphates are over 3ppm (test kit doesn't read higher). I have not had any algae outbreaks either. Plants pearl up very nicely and they seem to be growing well. The old leaves have died off a bit on certain plant species from transport and replanting I presume, but there are many new leaves sprouting and I have had to trim the stem plants twice so far.

Which reminds me I need to test my water today. I don't know about most hobbyist, but I like to write everything down in notebooks that we do to the systems. Not to mention it's cool to look back and see what you had 10 years ago. Or when a fish dies, to look up how long you had it from when you first purchased it.

Thats my experience on fast cycling.

[vca2004]

@ mott: What exactly makes you think that? Do you have any proof for this or is that only your opinion?

Here is a nice scientific article about dynamics of nitrifying bacteria:
http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/bss/13/4/333/_pdf

The doubling time for ammonia oxidizing and nitrite oxidizing bacteria is 29 and 21 hours respectively. Meaning if you do a 50% water change within 20-30 hours you have the same number of baceria in your aquarium again that you had before the water change. Therefore, doing too many or too large water changes is not all that beneficial (which supports the personal experience nismo tetra had with his aquarium). The more pre-seeded equipment (substrate, water, filtermaterial or filtersludge, plants) you can transfer to a new tank, the faster your cycling time will be.

[nismo tetra]

Originally Posted by vca2004

@ mott: What exactly makes you think that? Do you have any proof for this or is that only your opinion?

Here is a nice scientific article about dynamics of nitrifying bacteria:
http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/bss/13/4/333/_pdf

The doubling time for ammonia oxidizing and nitrite oxidizing bacteria is 29 and 21 hours respectively. Meaning if you do a 50% water change within 20-30 hours you have the same number of baceria in your aquarium again that you had before the water change. Therefore, doing too many or too large water changes is not all that beneficial (which supports the personal experience nismo tetra had with his aquarium). The more pre-seeded equipment (substrate, water, filtermaterial or filtersludge, plants) you can transfer to a new tank, the faster your cycling time will be.

In the new issue of Tropical Fish Hobbyist there is a 4 pg article on water changes by David E. Boruchowitz. It's part two of the column though. It is indeed a very interesting read. Very, very informative and debunks the ol 20% weekly is good. The EI method does it good, doing 50% weekly is the bare minimum I would do. More is better.

Getting off thread topic a bit, but you guys should check out that article. It opened my eyes to how important a WC really is.

[mott]

Originally Posted by vca2004

@ mott: What exactly makes you think that? Do you have any proof for this or is that only your opinion?

Here is a nice scientific article about dynamics of nitrifying bacteria:
http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/bss/13/4/333/_pdf

The doubling time for ammonia oxidizing and nitrite oxidizing bacteria is 29 and 21 hours respectively. Meaning if you do a 50% water change within 20-30 hours you have the same number of baceria in your aquarium again that you had before the water change. Therefore, doing too many or too large water changes is not all that beneficial (which supports the personal experience nismo tetra had with his aquarium). The more pre-seeded equipment (substrate, water, filtermaterial or filtersludge, plants) you can transfer to a new tank, the faster your cycling time will be.

We are talking ADA Amazonia here! it's known to leach ammonium for weeks!
If you had any livestock in a tank with new AS you'd better keep up on those WC's
The more water changes the better in this case.

Also no where in that whole study did they use so called "Seeded water"
What thy did use was seeded "Siporax" the glass bead media much like Ehfisubstrat.

[vca2004]

I myself was talking about the doubling time they have found in that article, nothing more. And even if ADA Amazonia leaches Ammonia for weeks (mine didn't by the way), it doesn't matter if you have enough bacteria in the tank to convert it! You will only end up with LOTS of Nitrate after a few days. BTW, most ammonia oxidizing and nitrifying bacteria are motiler, meaning they can "swim", therefore they won't just hang out on the filter or in the substrate, but will be in the water and everywhere else.

My own tank with ADA Amazonia II was completely cycled after only 3 weeks and I didn't even have anything to inoculate it with other than a few plants that I bought. Actually it was even cycled a few days before that, but I added some more ammonia to ensure once more that it was really cycled.

As with any new tank one still needs to constantly monitor the water parameters (ammonia, nitrite and nitrate) of course and make water changes accordingly. Anybody who doesn't do that is just relying on their luck! But with such a long doubling time (and 20-30 hours is a loong time for bacteria) it doesn't help the cycle to keep doing massive water changes. Doing massive water changes is especially pointless if one used inoculated water only for the new tank - taking most all of the bacteria back out and/or keeping them at the same level?!

I'd rather wait a few days before adding any livestock and not do any water changes to give the bacteria some time to establish.