Fishless cycling mystery

[EcoPit]

Ten days ago I started two 20 gal tanks. One will be a display tank and has an Emperor 280 filter and an inch of gravel. The other is a quarantine tank and has a Penguin 125. The Emperor has not been used in years. The Penguin was on a tank with one fish in it for a few months, but has been dry for a couple weeks. The gravel was in that same tank, but has been rinsed very well in tap water since. Both tanks were filled with chlorinated tap water and the filters ran for 24 hours before I added dechlorinator. I then added ammonia to both tanks to bring them up to about 4 ppm.

In the display tank over the past few days the ammonia is down to 0 ppm, nitrites are up to 2 ppm and nitrates are 5 ppm. So, things are progressing great. I added more ammonia. In the quarantine tank ammonia is still 4 ppm with no nitrite or nitrate.

Does this seem strange?

 

[anonapersona]

dry bacteria vs wet?

I'll guess that the dry biowheel has bacteria that were able to survive the un-dechlorinated water vs the maybe still damp one that was terribly hurt by the un-dechlorinated water.

I had a similar experience with a biowheel that had been in a hot attic for 9 months. It had not been sterilized after using, just put away after rinsing. It cycled really fast, in maybe 5 days I was seeing a big drop in ammonia.

 

[EcoPit]

That sounds very probable. It is funny--I thought the one would cycle faster because it had been running recently. I never even thought about chlorine and the bio-wheels. It is interesting how the bacteria resprouted so quickly on the dry wheel.

 

[rrkss]

Some bacteria form spores when exposed to drying out. Though I don't know if this is the case with these nitrifying bacteria, I can make an educated guess based on the fact that a new tank without any seeding does eventually become cycled probably from bacteria spores landing in the water from the air. Maybe these spores survived and re-hydrated leaving you with a good dose of benificial bacteria.

 

[RTR]

The FW nitrification bacteria have no spore form.

 

[anonapersona]

OK, but why?

The FW nitrification bacteria have no spore form.

OK, but how do I explain the fast reduction of ammonia in the tank when I ran the very dry biowheel and filter from the attic? The only item in that tank that came from an active tank was the Seachem ammonia alert, which came directly from a working tank. The heater had been out of use for a week or so, the aquarium had been scrubbed with vinegar and salt and throughly cleaned.

I sure can't prove it, but it looked like the used and very completly dried out biowheel made the tank cycle very very fast. Though I did not continue the experiment until the tank was done, the 5ppm ammonia was dropping rapidly on the 4th or 5th day, nearly zero at that point.

It'd be neat to have someone do that a a full experiment!