best ammonia source and other newbie cycle questions

[jpond83]

i was actually going to pee in a tank before but my wife told me i couldnt

[kkiel02]

Karin I dont know the details of all this, but if you are trying to get a cycle out of your new tank with your old rock or sand you probably wont because of all the bacteria that has built up on the rock, sand and the new stuff you have added. When I moved the 65 gallon to the 180 I didnt get a cycle since I was using dry rock and live rock, which provided addequate bacteria to process the ammonia before it built up. Even on the 65 gallon I used 50% live rock and 50% dry rock and only saw a slight spike in nitrite.

Now the old algae cycle will come with all the new real estate you provided with the tank upgrade. Diatoms, Red slime, coraline, etc.


Oh yeah and lol at all the pee comments.

[CoryDude]

You can place a cat litter box near the tank. That was an excellent source of ammonia in my tank for over 2 years.

[Europhyllia]

interesting observation:

both tanks are being fed the same stuff
both tanks were inoculated with the same Fritz commercial bacteria product

For a while the readings were very similar. I couldn't produce and big spikes due to having so much good bacteria added early on but after I added the big pellet reactor to the main tank and not the little quarantine tank I've noticed differing results for the first time.

Nitrate is 5 times higher in the quarantine tank than it is in the display tank (that has the bio pellets)

Since the values were almost identical until the pellet reactor I came online I expected it to stay similar so I was surprised when I tested today to find a real difference for the two tanks.

Now it looks like my display tank might be done sooner than the quarantine tank! I can no longer produce even the smallest ammonia measurement and nitrite just barely registers.
Hopefully it's all done and stable soon.

Since I damaged the main pump though I am using the skimmer pump as my return pump and the skimmer is off line -not a good thing with bio pellets. They are really pulling pH down. Got to get the skimmer pump pronto. I just didn't realize the pellets would kick in right away.
Per manufacturer they are supposed to take 1-2 weeks to colonize. I guess the Fritz bacteria must have kickstarted them.