Experiment: Extreme cycle

[threnjen]

Oh I forgot to post my daily

pH 7.8 (by the way....the API test is whack. I used my stick, then used the API test which said at least .4 lower, then calibrated the stick with two solutions only to find it was spot on, then used the stick again to verify)

Nitrites and nitrates don't *seem* to have changed. But it is at the point now that the color variations are just... impossible. I even did a 40x dilution and still wasn't sure. I really, really need the color key. Some things that I MUST have on hand before the next cycle.

TDS 139, down a bit
kH 11, down a smidge
PO3/4 (phosphorus) seems down a bit, which makes sense as the nitrite->nitrate bacteria use it the most

 

[freshwaterphish]

So after hundreds of post aboit buying the accurate api twst and get away from cheap inaccurate "lfs" test your now posting against all that and saying your stick reading is better or more accurate then the api water test kit. Lmao. I give up...good luck

Blue's Galaxy S4

 

[Delapool]

I've found the strips are more out for nitrites and nitrates - plus mine don't have ammonia which is the one I really need. Interesting as those are the time delay readings.

I thought the digital meter was great however it seems to have slipped calibration.

 

[Caliban07]

Adding baking soda to provide correct kH for entire cycle:

To create 7.14ppm
10mg/L OR 37.8 mg/G

PER L/G PER ppm ammonia

Samples:

16ppm ammonia in a 20g aquarium. 37.8 mg * 16 * 20 = 12096 mg or 12.1 g
8ppm ammonia in a 70L. 10 * 8 * 70 = 5600 mg or 5.6 g


HOWEVER

This does not account for the pH drops due to acidity created by the bacteria. For example, this cycle I am working on stalled because of a pH crash, but I had not finished using up all of the kH. So it didn't run out of kH - it first produced so much acidity that it overwhelmed the buffer and dropped below the level of nitrification. (confirm?)

Papers on nitrification simply advise a general 10:1 ratio. So instead of doing 7.14ppm, we just add 10ppm per 1ppm ammonia. This amount is

14 mg/L per 1ppm ammonia, OR 53 mg/g per 1ppm ammonia.

So in my test cycle for example, I should have added, to start, 53 * 16 * 20 = 16960 mg = 17g of baking soda. 1 tsp is about 5 grams. You can see back on page 1 that I added only 1/4 tsp baking soda to the initial setup. I did not add more until the pH crash.

SOLVED! We can do the set it and forget it. OMG! I have to find something else to cycle!!!

I will start something new on Saturday after my big project is due.

Jen I'm just confused here. It's probably me don't worry. I'm just curious where the 10mg/l came from?

 

[threnjen]

I am not talking about crappy test strips which are junk. If you're going to pop in and be rude on a 21 page thread then you need to read the entire thing first. The api test is fine for most but I need more accuracy in this experiment.
That's at the phish guy

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[threnjen]

Caliban I'm not sure it's correct. Is just that only the portion of the nahco3 that is co3 is carbonate for the alkalinity, so I only counted that when figuring out ppm "stuff". Using the Molar mass of the three ions, 10mg total nahco3 would give 7.14mg of just co3

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[Caliban07]

Caliban I'm not sure it's correct. Is just that only the portion of the nahco3 that is co3 is carbonate for the alkalinity, so I only counted that when figuring out ppm "stuff". Using the Molar mass of the three ions, 10mg total nahco3 would give 7.14mg of just co3

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Ok yes I keep forgetting about the carbonate part of baking soda. Sorry

 

[threnjen]

I'm not sure if I should include the h in but it's so small anyway and it would make the dose a smidge smaller so I think better to be a smidge over. Also I would use the 14mg dosage since I read that 10:1 carbonates is used in wastewater nitrification systems

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[Caliban07]

I'm not sure if I should include the h in but it's so small anyway and it would make the dose a smidge smaller so I think better to be a smidge over. Also I would use the 14mg dosage since I read that 10:1 carbonates is used in wastewater nitrification systems

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10:1 what is the 1?

 

[Caliban07]

Caliban I'm not sure it's correct. Is just that only the portion of the nahco3 that is co3 is carbonate for the alkalinity, so I only counted that when figuring out ppm "stuff". Using the Molar mass of the three ions, 10mg total nahco3 would give 7.14mg of just co3

Sent from my SGH-M919 using Aquarium Advice mobile app

How exactly did you calculate this I'm a bit lost.

 

[threnjen]

10 ppm carbonate to 1ppm ammonia

Here's my math:

Here is the formula to determine ppm:

From: Lesson 8: The Chemistry of Solutions

So what I want to know is, what g/L for 1ppm. So our variable in the equation is "mass of solute (g)". So I first rewrite the equation to put all instances of g on one side.

g = variable to solve for
mass of solvent = 1000 (water)
ppm = 1

This gives us 1 = (g/(1000+g)) * (1,000,000/1)
1 = (g/(1000+g)) * 1,000,000
1/1,000,000 = g/(1000+g)
.000001 = g/(1000+g)
.001 + .000001g = g
.001 = g - .000001g
.001 = .999999g

g/L=.001 to make 1 ppm
or, 1.000001 mg/L to make 1 ppm

Here it is rewritten as a single equation, using water weight as a constant for solvent, and adding in ppm as a changeable variable:
g=((1ppm/1000000)*1000)/(1-(1ppm/1000000))
Here, ppm is a variable that one can enter to solve for any ppm that I specify.
Or of course you can just multiply your g value from the simplified version by your ppm.

This is not the full answer of course. If you enter in 10ppm (for the 10:1 ratio), you'll be given 10mg/L. So we're not done because not all of that 10mg is carbonate.

So my molecule is NaHCO3, but I only care about the atom CO3.
Molar mass of CO3 is 60.01
Molar mass of the entire molecule is 84.0075

So CO3 is 60.01/84.0075 = .71434098 of the molecule

So to determine how much total solvent to put in, we solve for:

mg total solvent = mg of atom to make x ppm [from our previous equation] / (molar mass of desired atom / molar mass of molecule)

So in the specific case of our molecule with carbonate, this equation is:

mg = 1.0000001/(60.01/84.0075)
mg = 14



I'm not that good at showing my work with math problems so if this requires clarification I will try to look over it and expand it

 

[Caliban07]

10 ppm carbonate to 1ppm ammonia

Here's my math:

Here is the formula to determine ppm:

From: Lesson 8: The Chemistry of Solutions

So what I want to know is, what g/L for 1ppm. So our variable in the equation is "mass of solute (g)". So I first rewrite the equation to put all instances of g on one side.

g = variable to solve for
mass of solvent = 1000 (water)
ppm = 1

This gives us 1 = (g/(1000+g)) * (1,000,000/1)
1 = (g/(1000+g)) * 1,000,000
1/1,000,000 = g/(1000+g)
.000001 = g/(1000+g)
.001 + .000001g = g
.001 = g - .000001g
.001 = .999999g

g/L=.001 to make 1 ppm
or, 1.000001 mg/L to make 1 ppm

Here it is rewritten as a single equation, using water weight as a constant for solvent, and adding in ppm as a changeable variable:
g=((1ppm/1000000)*1000)/(1-(1ppm/1000000))
Here, ppm is a variable that one can enter to solve for any ppm that I specify.
Or of course you can just multiply your g value from the simplified version by your ppm.

This is not the full answer of course. If you enter in 10ppm (for the 10:1 ratio), you'll be given 10mg/L. So we're not done because not all of that 10mg is carbonate.

So my molecule is NaHCO3, but I only care about the atom CO3.
Molar mass of CO3 is 60.01
Molar mass of the entire molecule is 84.0075

So CO3 is 60.01/84.0075 = .71434098 of the molecule

So to determine how much total solvent to put in, we solve for:

mg total solvent = mg of atom to make x ppm [from our previous equation] / (molar mass of desired atom / molar mass of molecule)

So in the specific case of our molecule with carbonate, this equation is:

mg = 1.0000001/(60.01/84.0075)
mg = 14



I'm not that good at showing my work with math problems so if this requires clarification I will try to look over it and expand it

No I do get it now, it's just that I wasn't sure what your target was so it becomes a bit of a haze and I couldn't find these formulas anywhere.

Thanks

 

[Rak9378]

So do you guys ever sleep?? LOL

This is great stuff. Just catching up as I have been crazy busy at work. I had no idea the bacteria need the carbonate in order to flourish. I thought the only role the carbonate played was keeping pH stable. Learning a ton here

Thren - I may have capacity to mimic your experiment in a couple of weeks

 

[threnjen]

Well I am a vampire and Caliban is over in the UK

OK I have been doing my tests but not reporting because I am just getting frustrated/confused/aggravated. I can't seem to get readings for anything with the API test that mathematically match the ammonia that was added.

On nitrites, on the 3rd they were a tad darker than the day before. OK... that's ok I guess, maybe the ammonia just hadn't finished pooping it all out (by the way is nitrite actually their waste product in that sense?)
On the 4th, about the same.

Nitrates seem to continue to rise, but ....?? nitrites aren't going down. The test results just aren't giving me enough.

I even have a different nitrite/nitrate test, the Seachem one. I took a really hilarious picture with my phone showing a 100% and 50% reduction of each test type and all the colors are THE SAME. I can't get JACK for info. AND that test goes all the way to 25 nitrites so I SHOULD be able to get some real info from it.
I've even tried a 1/20th reduction on the API test for nitrites and while it IS lighter than an off the chart color, I'm noticing more and more that the purple spectrum is just not very well differentiated.

Also I forgot to wash vials and the crazy red nitrates and purple nitrites stained more of them... I need to buy more vials!! Argh!

I didn't even record my nitrites or nitrates for the past two test days because I'm not even sure what to say about them. I'm mad at my own spreadsheet.

 

[Caliban07]

Nitrites must have stalled the cycle

I just don't know why trites arn't going down when ammonia is and trates are going up.

What do you expect trites to be at this stage?

 

[threnjen]

Ammonia has been gone for days, I have not added more.

I'm not sure what I expect them to be at. The 4th is day 18. I'm certainly not worried about the cycle yet. Right now I am just worried and annoyed at my inability to read the API test when it gets to a certain point.

I used to be able to keep the vials day to day to really get a comparison, but the levels are so high it just doesn't work.

 

[Rak9378]

If Trates are going up that must mean some of the Trites must have been processed, no? Unfortunately I just think the API test is going to be unreliable at these parameter levels. If there is anything that YouTube video by Dr. Hovanec showed its that at significantly elevated levels hobbyist grade kits are unreliable.

 

[tommyk]

Hi thren,

In a couple of weeks I may be able to replicate this experiment.
I could do it at work, I work in a waste water treatment plant and have access to hach testing equipment so I may be able to do it with more accurate figures. Rather than depending on the api test. Let me know if your interested and what type of filters etc you used, just so we are comparing like with like

 

[threnjen]

I am not sure anyone has ever gotten this excited about the words "waste water treatment plant" as I just did

The specific filter isn't even important so long as it is sufficient for the water it is filtering by normal aquaria standards, aka rated at least twice the size of the "tank" or bucket, bin whatever. But for reference I'm using a canister and I'd say an HOB would be the closest to replicate that (Rather than an air driven sponge)

Our most interesting differences will be that of our source water. I feel like there's a trend towards slower cycling with harder water, which doesn't even make sense to me.

 

[tommyk]

Normally when I tell people where I work I get an eeeeww or 'does it not stink'. Great to get a positive reaction

I'm in an area with super hard water and a high ph. But I have a ro unit at work. I could use the water from this which is soft and has a ph of about 6.5. And we could add baking soda to replicate. Only problem is I wouldn't be able start it until mid may, I'm getting married in 3 weeks and it will be mid May before were back from honeymoon.
Still it gives us plenty of time to come up with a plan of action.