How to kick start your filtration system (Biological)
Ok what do you do after you purchased all your branded filters and medias'? You set up, throw in a few guppies and you let it cycle. In short, you wait for "Bacteria" to move into thier new house. Some shop offers you to buy bacteria booster or bacteria starter. Are there another way around this? well yes infact its free, why spend the money when you can get the real thing for free and guaranteed to work?
If you've another matured tank running, just take a few pieces of the used media or sponge from your existing tank and put into your new filtration system. Tadaaaa.... you've just migrated a few millions bacteria and all the bacteria you need is there. If you dun have an existing tank around, you can get it from your friends (but do make sure the fish is healthy), as for me I get it from lfs, select a tank that you've checked that are disease free and take a piece of sponge, pack it in water with 02 (just like how you pack fish) and quickly make your way home.
Aerobic bacterias are quite fragile and doesnt last very long without oxygen, food and in the right conditions. If you were to ask, will I purchase one of those bacteria booster? I will answer you chee sin, will you buy a bag of plastic filled with air? when you can just breath in free oxygen.
Coming back to aerobic bacteria, aerobic means bacterias that breath oxygen, and they really do need plenty of oxygen to reproduce and to function. The result/what comes out from your filtered water will be NO3 and CO2.
Now from all the NO3 that is now the final product how do we deal with it?
No.1 Best way is water change
No.2 Plants as we all know plants eat poo
No.3 Denitrification Filter
Lets discuss plants, all these years, my filtration cant do without plants. They offer so much benefit to our tank. I prefer terrestrial plants as I'm a lazy fella, but you can choose any type of fast growing plants and they'll do wonders for your tank.
We've only mentioned about NH3/4, NO2 and NO3, but do you know we've a bunch of micro and macro nutrient in our water? FE, MG, blah blah go google for all the nutrient that goes into our pellet and they will all end up in our water. How do we get rid of these? Plants or WC, I'll take plants as they're the more elegant solution.
Denitrification
Now please don't go there, I've been there and its no fun, unless you're having a saltwater tank, better stick to water change. Denitrification process are very complex and forever changing, it is better that its not working because when it is working it means you're really culturing anaerobic bacteria and these are bad guys territory.
You'll need to be
constantly monitoring them, slack like what happened to me means it could cost you an expensive fish.
Ok what do you do after you purchased all your branded filters and medias'? You set up, throw in a few guppies and you let it cycle. In short, you wait for "Bacteria" to move into thier new house. Some shop offers you to buy bacteria booster or bacteria starter. Are there another way around this? well yes infact its free, why spend the money when you can get the real thing for free and guaranteed to work?
If you've another matured tank running, just take a few pieces of the used media or sponge from your existing tank and put into your new filtration system. Tadaaaa.... you've just migrated a few millions bacteria and all the bacteria you need is there. If you dun have an existing tank around, you can get it from your friends (but do make sure the fish is healthy), as for me I get it from lfs, select a tank that you've checked that are disease free and take a piece of sponge, pack it in water with 02 (just like how you pack fish) and quickly make your way home.
Aerobic bacterias are quite fragile and doesnt last very long without oxygen, food and in the right conditions. If you were to ask, will I purchase one of those bacteria booster? I will answer you chee sin, will you buy a bag of plastic filled with air? when you can just breath in free oxygen.
Coming back to aerobic bacteria, aerobic means bacterias that breath oxygen, and they really do need plenty of oxygen to reproduce and to function. The result/what comes out from your filtered water will be NO3 and CO2.
Now from all the NO3 that is now the final product how do we deal with it?
No.1 Best way is water change
No.2 Plants as we all know plants eat poo
No.3 Denitrification Filter
Lets discuss plants, all these years, my filtration cant do without plants. They offer so much benefit to our tank. I prefer terrestrial plants as I'm a lazy fella, but you can choose any type of fast growing plants and they'll do wonders for your tank.
We've only mentioned about NH3/4, NO2 and NO3, but do you know we've a bunch of micro and macro nutrient in our water? FE, MG, blah blah go google for all the nutrient that goes into our pellet and they will all end up in our water. How do we get rid of these? Plants or WC, I'll take plants as they're the more elegant solution.
Denitrification
Now please don't go there, I've been there and its no fun, unless you're having a saltwater tank, better stick to water change. Denitrification process are very complex and forever changing, it is better that its not working because when it is working it means you're really culturing anaerobic bacteria and these are bad guys territory.
You'll need to be
constantly monitoring them, slack like what happened to me means it could cost you an expensive fish.
Carbon base denitrification filter Bad stuff
These are some of my planted filter system
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