[jaysee]

Now that the 125 is full of water, I'm going to hook up the filters. They have been full of seeded media and water since I sold the 75 about 4 months ago. Soooooo, the big question..... is the bacteria still alive. I've left filters off but full of water for nearly 2 months before and still had the cycle. We will see..... ammonia dosing to commence tomorrow.

 

[Tracy Bird]

I'm interested in the outcome of this experiment....

Maybe you could add a poll before you post results, it'd be interesting to see what posters think.

I'd say the bacteria is no longer alive.

 

[NewFishFiend]

With no source of ammonia for the past 4 months for food, my guess would be that the bacteria is not alive anymore. We shall see

 

[Austin]

Please let us know what happens!! My filters have been sitting in my old fish tank (with rotting plant matter a bit), and not running, so I'm in a similar boat!!

 

[jaysee]

Ask and you shall receive - a poll!

There's plenty of decomposing matter in the filter, so I wouldn't exactly say that there is no source of ammonia. 4 months is a pretty long time though.

 

[Austin]

I voted other. My gut is that some will have survived, but not all, and that it will cycle much quicker than it normally takes.

 

[Austin]

Being in the same position as you, I just tested my water. I have one platy now I get 4 days ago. I have I think 0 ammonia (hard for me to tell for the test. I couldn't find my card. But color was the same as clean water), 0 nitrites, and 12.5 nitrate. so I think you may have similar results

 

[JDM]

Other.

The cycle in the filter will be fine. It takes a long time for decomposing matter to completely decompose to the point of not creating ammonia. Even without the ammonia, the nitrifying organisms go dormant rather than just dying off. How effective the filter only organisms will be seeing as the tank and contents are fresh depends completely on how much of the total ammonia load it was handling previously and how much of a load the decomposing matter in the filter is producing now and how much of a load will be expected with the new tank.

I'd be curious to test the filter water before hooking the filters up to see what the levels are.

Jeff.

 

[jaysee]

I only hooked up one of the 3 filters that have been sitting. I'll test the water in a filter tonight.

 

[jaysee]

Tested ammonia in one of the filters - from the very top of the filter. Ammonia is sky high - perhaps 4 ppm. I'd like to test the water at the bottom of the filter....

I dosed the 125 with about 2.5 ppm ammonia. We shall see what tomorrow brings.

 

[Tracy Bird]

Wait a minute, I'm confused which doesn't take much...

You opened up the lid on the filter which has been sitting full of water for months and the ammonia was 4.0 ppm?

Or the ammonia level in the filter is 4.0 after you hooked up the filter to the tank and after you dosed the tank to 2.5?

Sorry, just trying my best to follow along....

 

[JDM]

Curiosity satisfied, thanks.

Jeff.

 

[jaysee]

Wait a minute, I'm confused which doesn't take much...

You opened up the lid on the filter which has been sitting full of water for months and the ammonia was 4.0 ppm?

Or the ammonia level in the filter is 4.0 after you hooked up the filter to the tank and after you dosed the tank to 2.5?

Sorry, just trying my best to follow along....

Yes, I popped the top of a canister that has been sitting full of dirty (seeded) media and water for 4 months and the water at the top was 4 ppm.

I only have an XP3 running on the tank at the moment. I can only assume the ammonia concentration was up in that filter too, as they were unplugged at the same time. I added ammonia to make around 2.5 ppm for the tank, but with what was probably in the filter the overall concentration may be as high as 3 ppm.

Tomorrow night I'll post test results.

 

[jaysee]

4 months is too long for the canister to sit.

I'm going to give it some more time to see if the ammonia will drop any, but I am not expecting much at this point. So we will see if the bacteria will "wake up".

 

[JDM]

There's likely too much decaying material in there for you to see it drop any time soon. Perhaps sometime you could test it for nitrites and nitrates?

I might expect that there is either no nitrites as everything is ticking along as it can, or the nitrites may be very high. The ammonia oxidizers will only go dormant in one of three cases:

1- no ammonia to feed on
2- ammonia over 10ppm
3- nitrites high enough to cause them to go dormant... I might think between 1 and 4 ppm to be this threshold but I dont know. Its not something studied as much as ammonia oxidization capacity is.

Jeff.

 

[jaysee]

The ammonia was off the charts when I set up the tank, but now it is 0. Nitrites are also 0. I didn't do a thing to the tank - no water changes or anything.

Looks like 4 months was not too long for the bacteria to sit, but rather 4 days was too short for it to reanimate/make an impact.

 

[jaysee]

Further ammonia dosings and tests conclude that the bacteria has been reanimated - tank is ready for fish....



Stage 2 of the experiment - how long does it take for the bacteria to come back.

I'm going to turn off that filter and add the second canister (thats been sitting) to the tank. Then I'm going to dose the tank with ammonia and *gulp* test every day.