Sun.singh1991

I second the box filter, pack it up with some Zeolite and poly and it’ll do wonders!

Well said my friend. We were all new at one point.

Nitrification is much slower at that low of a pH and ammonium does not damage cell tissues like ammonia because it can not cross animal cell membranes. If you have plants, perhaps they are up taking the ammonia/ammonium at a faster rate than your nitrifying bacteria can. Either way the system is successful for you. 🙂

You’re very right. At that low of a pH the ammonia in your system is being protonated to ammonium very rapidly which is non-toxic to fish. So you wouldn’t need the traditional ammonia-nitrite-nitrate cycle.

You’re correct about toxicity of ammonia being not an issue under low pH settings, but not all fish can live under low pH. I’m trying to explain that the nitrification process is accelerated at a higher pH because of the use of alkalinity.

After using Fritzyme 7 and Seachem matrix in my tanks, I have never had a problem with cycling an aquarium. I just make sure the tank has pH is over 6.8 and temp over 76 and the bacteria have always kept up.

Safe way to raise it is to put some crushed coral or a cuttlefish bone into your hob filter and let it slowly dissolve into carbonate which will raise your pH over time. I do this with all my tanks because carbonate is consumed by nitrifying bacteria as well.

What’s your pH and temperature? Nitrifying bacteria grow and thrive best in higher pH and temps. Make sure your pH is over 6.8 and temp is over 76 degrees F. If pH is low, let me know. I’ll show you how to get it up the right way.

It works just fine but I prefer the Aquaclear filters to the Tidals now.

Sponge filters are fine for what you probably need.

Over time anything will lose nutritional value in the freezer. However a few months should be okay. As for testing, Cory I think was trying to talk about how people never test for other parameters if things go wrong. People don’t really understand PH, Alkalinity, and GH sometimes.

UV light at higher wattages will kill basically everything in the water. However, to run it at that strength would be pretty expensive. Also, I would say that using UV can actually weaken the immune systems of fish over time. Since they would not be exposed to as many pathogens.

Some products like Seachem Stability actually contain the microbes in their spore forms, in favorable conditions these spores will become active.

Unfortunately I don’t have the necessary equipment to test for specific bacteria strains at home.

So after doing some research it would seem I was incorrect. Recent studies have shown that it is actually Ammonia-oxidizing archaea(AOA) in the phylum Nitrososphaerota that oxidize ammonia in most of our aquariums.