[Grah the great]

'ello all! I am currently setting up some 2 gallon bowls filtered entirely by plants, and they are being fed flakes twice daily in preparation for whatever fish/inverts are kept in them (leaning towards a 1 inch American native called the pygmy killifish, leptolucania ommata). Anyhow, I recently got some seachem ammonia alert kits (the ones you hang in the tank with a suction cup that change color) in the mail and put them in the bowls, where I learned that they are at about .05 ppm ammonia right now. Is this enough to be a problem for anything I could reasonably keep in a 2 gallon bowl (shrimp, tiny fishes, dwarf crays, etc)? Thankx for your quick replies! PS...not sure this is helpful at all, but the ramshorn snails I put in to eat some of the excess food are unfazed by the ammonia concentrations.

 

[AWolf]

What kind of plants are you using? I am of the opinion that floating plants are the best ammonium eaters. Since ammonias are lighter than water, they float up to the surface, were the floating plants can utilitze them. Also, how big are the bowls? Sorry if you already answered this is in your post. I think a lot will depend on these two variables.

 

[happi]

the most important thing is what are the water parameter?

 

[Grah the great]

The ammonia alert only detects pure ammonia, NH3...it does not detect ammonium, chloramines, etc. Thus, the PH and TDS don't matter much in this post (though if the PH was below 7 the sensor would almost certainly read 0, as ammonia is almost all converted to ammonium in such conditions).

 

[roadmaster]

I would try feeding once every other day, rather than twice daily if ammonia was concern in such a small volume of water.
Not like your gonna stock these tiny container's with large bioload and plant's will indeed be a benefit.

 

[Grah the great]

OK. The twice daily feeding is actually to get the bowls ready for when they do have the fish...I am hoping to use them for breeding the pygmy killies as well as keeping them, and fry really don't do well on just one daily feeding. The plants, coincidentally, consist chiefly of almost solid layers of guppy grass at this time (I tried to get some hygrophila corymbosa to grow emersed in them, but I accidentally left the plastic wrap too loose and they wilted...will likely be seeking another emersed plant).

 

[roadmaster]

OK. The twice daily feeding is actually to get the bowls ready for when they do have the fish...I am hoping to use them for breeding the pygmy killies as well as keeping them, and fry really don't do well on just one daily feeding. The plants, coincidentally, consist chiefly of almost solid layers of guppy grass at this time (I tried to get some hygrophila corymbosa to grow emersed in them, but I accidentally left the plastic wrap too loose and they wilted...will likely be seeking another emersed plant).

Two gallon would be too small/unstable for my effort's at breeding much of anything in number's outside shrimp's.
I wish you well however on your endeavor.

 

[Diana]

You can use fish (or shrimp) food to cycle a tank. Feed about twice as much to grow the bacteria as you would ultimately be feeding any livestock. When you are using protein as the source of ammonia it has to decompose before the nitrifying bacteria can get it, so there will be a delay in the cycle getting started.

Alternate: Get a bottle of Nitrospira species of bacteria and split that among all the bowls.

Even with no water movement there will be some bacterial growth, but not much. Still, it will help.

I would be trying to find some way to add some water movement.