Daily 500 gallon water changes aren't fun!

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justonemoretank

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Mar 30, 2009
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Virginia
Hi all-
I was hoping maybe someone could offers some advice. This is regarding our 1000+ gallon indoor pond. Upon completion, I tried to cycle it the old-fashioned with with store-bought ammonia, but after a month, nothing happened. We drained, rinsed, and refilled the pond. The pond has been stocked fairly slowly, but there's still a huge bioload (20 inch redtail, 24 inch arowana, 18 inch pacu). As you can imagine, the ammonia has spiked, leading us to do 50% water changes almost daily, as well as dump in Prime and all sorts of supposed BB-in-a-bottle. This has been going on for about two weeks, and I'm sure it's really stressing the fish, but I just can't let the ammonia spike like what needs to happen for the cycle to really start because that would stress them out even more. As a last resort, I have ordered $250.00 worth of Dr. Tim's One-And-Only, upon hearing from various sources I trust (WetWebMedia, for one) that it's the real deal. It's supposed to be here tomorrow (next-day-air). So, the million dollar question is, am I doing the right thing? Am I doing enough? The doseage for the Dr. Tim's stuff is right for the amount I'm buying, but I mean, is there something else to do to facilitate the cycle beginning and stress the fish out less? Any advice on what's going on would be appreciated.
 
Dr Tims is THE REAL DEAL! Instant cycling. I use it for all my tanks. In fact things like prime and ammo-lock only slow down the cycling process.
To speed cycling you can 'plant' a tank (or in this case a pond) with decorations from another tank, which contains Bb. This helps speed things up.
 
Good to hear you like Dr. Tim's. Unfortunately, I can't put much in the pond, because Guido, the red-tail, might eat it. We have been turkey-bastering the gook out of the bottom of one our freshwater sumps and putting into the filter part of the pond, hoping there's good bacteria in there that will speed the process. I forgot to tell what the filter is, and someone might need to know in order to chime in. The filter is part of the cinder block pond. It is about eight feet long, a foot and a half wide, and three and a half feet deep. It is filled with the filter pads you buy for ponds (they look like plastic spaghetti, packed together really fine). There are three pumps that pump about 4000 gallons per hour over the wall, the water moves up through the pads, and falls into the pond over a lower wall.
 
Seeding the pond with mature media would, in my experience, be your best bet...

Keep in mind when you add the Dr Tims that the next time you do a 40~50% water change you are diluting your product by 40~50%...

Personally, I think you should have added a decent ammount of old media to your pond's filter and either lightly stocked the pond immediately or did a short "fishless cycle" using store bought ammonia for a week or two to expand the bacteria colony that moved in with the old media.
 
Well by ordering dr tims you did a good thing, and everything should clear up within 24 hours of putting it in the tank. It used to be a lot cheaper, but a company sold their patent to dr tims, now it's expensive :(

It's not diluting the product... Have you used dr tims? It's the actual BB that you need, not some knock off stuff to help clear ammonia. So it attaches itself to decorations and filter media quickly. Within about 6 hours it should all be attached.
 
I've never used it. It is expensive, but I'm kind of at my wit's end, so I didn't know what else to do. I do have gravel in the pond (600 lbs), and like I said, all of the media, so hopefully it will attach quickly and start eating ammonia.

In my original post, I stated that I tried using store-bought ammonia, but the system was poisoned and I was unsuccessful. By adding the gook from my sump, we are essentially doing what one would be doing by adding media from an established system. The only difference is the gook would be on the media, not in a liquid. The gook is now in our filter media, because we squirted it on top.
 
if you have gravel from another tank thats long estanlished, take a good handful or two out and dump it into your pond. it will help to seed your gravel much quicker as well. or if you have any bio-media from an established tank filter, put that into the new filter.

at this point, im sure you want to try every possible way to get things going smoothly, and as was already mentioned, using old media to seed new is the best.

if you dont have a good tank to borrow stuff from, make a post in the marketplace. im sure theres someone in your area that can help with a handful of gravel or bio media. if you lived closer, i just removed 200lbs+ of gravel from a tank that was running for over 2 years
 
If only I lived closer! That would be perfect. Well, I do have tanks with gravel, in fact, the 125 Guido used to live in is empty right now, with just the food bits being added so as not to interrupt the cycle (we're getting ready to move tanks around and move fish around into different tanks). However, I could just trade it out -- half of the gravel from the 125, into the pond, and scoop the same amount out of the pond and put it in the empty tank. I'll do that tonight. Thanks for the tip.
 
Another idea as putting a large chunk of poly filter in your filter to keep ammonia down until dr tims arrives.
 
Okay, so I got the Dr. Tim's today and did a HUGE water change right before I added the Dr. Tim's. Ammonia levels lowered to .5-1. The Aro isn't looking good. It's probably a combination of the stress from ammonia and the fact that he has never eaten since the move (about three weeks). I'm not sure he didn't really hurt himself thrashing around during the move. I really hope he makes it. Temp is about 80 degrees, no nitrite/ate. I found out that my calculations were wrong on the amount of Dr. Tim's -- I actually only added enough of it for 600 gallons. However, I cannot afford to order more, so hopefully that bacteria will start working and reproducing quickly. I'll definitely post an update every day -- this could either be a great boost for Dr. Tim's business, or if it doesn't work right, a warning for other fishkeepers.
 
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