Linwood
Aquarium Advice FINatic
I have a 30G quarantine tank cycling.
This raises a question. I have no immediate plans for what will go into it, though I can probably predict a bit in advance.
I want to keep the biofilter healthy and at adequate capacity. I realize it will scale up and down a bit fairly quickly, but I don't want to be starving it, then suddenly plop in 10 fish and overwhelm it and have a ammonia or nitrite spike.
So I want to keep running some approximation of the right amount of ammonia through it to simulate X fish, whatever X is likely to be the next time.
So... how can I find that out? I suspect at some level things like AqAdvisor is doing that under the covers, but I see no quantitative information to use there. are there calculators that attempt to quantify bioload not in terms of filtration or fish-equivalency, but in terms of ammonia dosing daily?
I really don't know if, in a steady state, 1/2 ml of household ammonia is the same as 5 fish, or I need 3 ml, or maybe 1/8 ml. My goal being to be in the approximate range and know the tank is quickly cycling that out to nitrates before I add fish, and be able to maintain it that way potentially for weeks without fish (since it's a lot easier to stop dosing ammonia the day or so before adding fish, than to relocate a fish based bio-load somewhere else).
This raises a question. I have no immediate plans for what will go into it, though I can probably predict a bit in advance.
I want to keep the biofilter healthy and at adequate capacity. I realize it will scale up and down a bit fairly quickly, but I don't want to be starving it, then suddenly plop in 10 fish and overwhelm it and have a ammonia or nitrite spike.
So I want to keep running some approximation of the right amount of ammonia through it to simulate X fish, whatever X is likely to be the next time.
So... how can I find that out? I suspect at some level things like AqAdvisor is doing that under the covers, but I see no quantitative information to use there. are there calculators that attempt to quantify bioload not in terms of filtration or fish-equivalency, but in terms of ammonia dosing daily?
I really don't know if, in a steady state, 1/2 ml of household ammonia is the same as 5 fish, or I need 3 ml, or maybe 1/8 ml. My goal being to be in the approximate range and know the tank is quickly cycling that out to nitrates before I add fish, and be able to maintain it that way potentially for weeks without fish (since it's a lot easier to stop dosing ammonia the day or so before adding fish, than to relocate a fish based bio-load somewhere else).