Ammonia can kill nitrifying bacteria?

BTW, I'm not trying to say your method if used correctly is BAD. The big if is will pH and everything else be reliably monitored by the person (no offense meant to the original poster).
There is very little room for error for someone that may be overwhelmed in using ammo-lock and buffering the pH with crushed coral to prevent drops, with the addition of water changes.

Maintaining the pH stably below 7.0 I think would take more monitoring and may be a bit more overwhelming to someone than using products known to detoxify ammonia and using crushed coral to buffer the pH from dropping. Low kH water is unstable by nature and I think such large pH crashes would be detrimental to the inhabitants and significantly extend the cycle time.
 
I did a 75% water change last night and was able to get my ammonia to 2, but this morning it was up to 8 again. I'm planning to move the arowanas into other tanks.
but have to add some crushed corals in my other tank to make sure same thing don't happen to the other tanks.
would it be a good idea to move them out of the tank first , I'll be leaving 10 clown loaches and 5 plecos in the existing tank. would this be a good idea?
then if the ammonia level is lower, i'll seed from my other sump.
 
You definitely need to try and spread out your bioload. I'm not sure how big your fish are but more than one aro, several clown loaches and several plecos for a 350g sounds like a lot. I'm not sure what other tanks you have, but try to spread it out where you have as little bioload in each tank as possible. And yeah, you need to add crushed coral to each to prevent your pH crashing.

You can move biomedia from another tank to seed other tanks as soon as you move the fish to them since they'll be producing ammonia right off the bat.
Next time you do a water change and get the ammonia back down below 5 try adding some cycled media and see if you can get the cycle on your 350g going again.
 
RiVerfishgirl said:
You definitely need to try and spread out your bioload. I'm not sure how big your fish are but more than one aro, several clown loaches and several plecos for a 350g sounds like a lot. I'm not sure what other tanks you have, but try to spread it out where you have as little bioload in each tank as possible. And yeah, you need to add crushed coral to each to prevent your pH crashing.

You can move biomedia from another tank to seed other tanks as soon as you move the fish to them since they'll be producing ammonia right off the bat.
Next time you do a water change and get the ammonia back down below 5 try adding some cycled media and see if you can get the cycle on your 350g going again.
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thanks really appreciate the help, I have another 4x2x2 tank with only a pair of rotkiel severum and filtration is also sump filter.
Also have another 8x2x2 tank.
I'll move 2 arowanas into the 4x2x2, and the other bigger one ionto the other 8xx2 tank. then i'll do another big water change on this tank that i'm trying to seed.

will post update again :)
 
Cerianthus

One paper is my own (Burrell et al 2001) which can be found at

http://www.drtimsaquatics.com/Library_Presentations/SciencePapers/SciencePapers.html

we were able to manipulate which AOB showed up by adjusting the ammonia dosing level. You can also go to google scholar and put in my name and you'll find the paper and then click on the citations and you'll find others.

Riverfishgirl - I did not mean to imply that the AOB that prefer high ammonia will show up. They may not which is why I always say to keep your ammonia below 5 ppm. The typical AOB Nitrosomonas europaea is a high ammonia AOB which makes sense since it is found in wastewater treatment plants but not aquaria.

But if you maintain a high ammonia level (above 5 ppm) the AOB you really want won't start working. A reason why a good water change to bring the ammonia down gets the process going.
 
Please help me interpret my test results, I tested my ammonia and it was now down to 2. I tried to seed again last night, I tested for nitrite and there was no nitrite at all, i tested for nitrate and there was 20 - 40 PPM, our tap water does not have nitrate,
could it be my cycle has completed? I'll test again first thing tomorrow morning.
 
Riverfishgirl - I did not mean to imply that the AOB that prefer high ammonia will show up. They may not which is why I always say to keep your ammonia below 5 ppm. The typical AOB Nitrosomonas europaea is a high ammonia AOB which makes sense since it is found in wastewater treatment plants but not aquaria.
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Thank you for your reply. I was just curious as to why that would happen. It wasn't a scientific experiment by any means, just an example I use to show that if your ammonia is very high the tank may very well never cycle. :)
Good to have you here btw. It's very hard to find accurate information on nitrifying bacteria by searching google. I have read a lot about it, but who knows how accurate every bit of information I'm reading is. Not to mention it's not always represented in a scientific manner, which leads to confusion.

Please help me interpret my test results, I tested my ammonia and it was now down to 2. I tried to seed again last night, I tested for nitrite and there was no nitrite at all, i tested for nitrate and there was 20 - 40 PPM, our tap water does not have nitrate,
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Your primary and secondary colonies will not necessarily grow at the same rate. So you may have your secondary colonies converting nitrites to nitrates, but your primary colonies are not sufficient to completely reduce ammonia to 0 yet. So no, your cycle is not complete, but you may have some biological bacteria present.
I suppose there is also a chance you still have nitrates present from before you tank completely crashed. Until your ammonia and nitrites are completely to 0 consistently your tank is not cycled.
 
Hi,

Another update, when i got hom elast night, i tested water parameters, Ammonia was at 0, but my ph has again dropped to 5.5. i quickly added a tablesppoon of baking soda, i tested again after about 20 minutes and my ph was at 6, so i ended up adding 3 tablespoon in all. I also added 2 kilos of ceramic rings and about 4 kilos crushed corals.
this morning when i tested my water, it was at 7.5, ammonia now at 0, and i have 40 ppm nitrate, can i consider my cycle complete?
For water changes , whats the nitrate level i should try to maintain.

also when woul dbe a good time to clean 1-2 chambers of my sump, ever since i setup this tank, about 8 months ago, i have not cleaned out the sump yet.
so the media is really realy dirty.

thanks again for the help :)
 
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