Aspencer said:
I put in 5 ml of ammonia in the tank in the morning, tested water in the afternoon and register no ammonia. I added another two table spoons and will test tomorrow morning. How much do you guys put in the tank to get it up to 4?
Nice tread!
If your ammonia is from ACE, normally is 10% concentration, for a 20G tank, no more than 3 ml will give you 4 ppm. So based in true math you overdosed the tank. But because you are using a "matured" filter, maybe you will see low levels now.
IMO and by my own experience, you don't need to re-cycle your new tank. If your 10G was fully cycled, your filter has already enough bacterias to process your actual bioload, even when you will be loosing the bacterias from the gravel (new gravel), you will keep the majority of the colony in the old filter.
I upgraded my tank from 26G to a 100G recently, I transferred all my fish in 24 hours after I set up the new tank, I also used new sand and my old filter, I never saw a spike in the ammonia or nitrites, and in just 4 days I started to read nitrates. I read also a lot of people doing the same with the same results.
In conclusion, just my opinion, you should not try to recycle the filter adding ammonia, as long as you don't increase the amount of fish immediately, your tank should be ready.
