Established Sponge?
- Thread starter TripleW
- Start date
i would have the sponge running, aslo i would add a few feeder goldfish just to help the ammonia build up to make things go quicker.
if it's an established sponge, you must run it with the same approximate amount of waste as was being produced in the previous tank or your bacteria will DIE!!!.
think of your sponge as a different type of aquarium. the only difference is the size of the occupants. no air or food and the inhabitants die. then all you have is an empty tank/sponge.
think of your sponge as a different type of aquarium. the only difference is the size of the occupants. no air or food and the inhabitants die. then all you have is an empty tank/sponge.
Yeah, I thought about that after I posted this and turned it on. I think it had enough ammonia to be ok since it came out of a 10 gallon tank and went into a 125 gallon with 4 ppm ammonia in it already. The surprise came after I turned it on. a Surprise for me anyway. Here is a post that I put into another forum...
Apparently this must be coming from the sponge? That is the response I am getting so far. I just didn't think that a little sponge could have that much nitrate in it.Hi guys, I am in the process of doing a fishless cycle on my 125 gallon tank. I started it on Tuesday May 29 th. I filled my tank, dechlorinated, hooked up heaters, bubbler, filters (Penguin 350 and Whisper 60) cranked the heat to 83 and added my ammonia to 4 PPM. I also took a filter cartridge from an established tank and put it behind the cartridge in my Penguin 350. In addition I had a sponge filter that had been running in the established tank as well and placed it in the tank not running. Test results are as follows
Tuesday May 29
4 ppm Ammonia
0 ppm Nitrite
0 ppm Nitrate
Wednesday May 30
4 ppm ammonia
0 ppm Nitrite
0 ppm Nitrate
Today (Thursday) I decided to turn the sponge filter on, I thought it would spread the good bacteria around the tank a bit faster. I turned it on gave the tank its dose of ammonia, and went about my business. About an hour later I came back and decided to test my parameters.
4 ppm Ammonia
0.25 ppm Nitrite
40 ppm Nitrate
I was confused and thought I must have messed up the testing. I tested everything again to include PH this time and got the exact same readings. Here is picture proof.
Is this just because of me turning on the sponge? I can't believe that I would get Nitrates that quick and so much of it. Should I just let it be for now?
When your cycling its normal for there to be a spike in water parameters. Give it time for the bacteria to establish, then the ammonia and nitrite will go to zero, and water changes or plants can reduce the nitrate. It has only been two days, it takes about 2 months to fully cycle a tank. But it should be safe to start adding a few small fish after a couple of weeks of running the sponge filter. Save your test kits and just test it once or twice a week.
I plan on just keeping on going with the plan and seeing how things settle out, which I am sure they will.Thanks for the help!
If you're getting nitrates that means you are almost cycled. 2 months is BS haha. Just keep waiting until the ammonia and nitrite are consistently 0ppm even though you keep adding ammonia, this means that your tank is cycled.
2 months is safe. After that time you should definitely be able to keep what stock you want.
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