Time for water

[daneeyre]

The new fish house is nearly complete and ready to be filled with water, just a couple of questions.

1. Once system is up and running I would like to nuke the system with either pp or f & mg to kill off anything on the media as it isn't new, what dosage should I use to do this in a 200 gallon system?

2. To mature the filter I would like to use a handfull of goldfish for 6 weeks, is there a problem in doing this? Is there any strain of goldfish that would be best?

[Paul]

Use PP, don't use F&MG Dosage isn't important as long as it is plenty When I have done this I have used a teaspoon of granules. Water goes deep purple, almost black. 20ppm though if you need a dosage

I wouldn't use goldfish of any kind, of for that matter fish of any kind. I'd use straight ammonia. Homebase sell it, as doers many good pharmacies. Get the plain stuff with no foaming additives etc. This way you cannot introduce any pathogens and you can add enough ammonia to get the filter capable of sustaining discus. You would need an awful lot of goldfish or very big hands other wise.

[daneeyre]

Cheers Paul on the advice, I use 40% ammonia at work so that won't be a problem. Do you just put it in and wait for the ammonia levels to drop before adding more or do you try to keep a constant amount in the system? Obviously the time scale to mature will be the same??

[Paul]

Initially. yes. Add ammonia to 4ppm and then let it start to drop, then keep topping it back up to 4ppm. Once it uses hat in a day and there are no nitrites the filter is set - big water change and hot to trot.

Periodically check the nitrates, if these get very high they seem to slow the process. If they do, then a w/c resolves.

[bazzle]

Originally Posted by Paul

Initially. yes. Add ammonia to 4ppm and then let it start to drop, then keep topping it back up to 4ppm. Once it uses hat in a day and there are no nitrites the filter is set - big water change and hot to trot.

Periodically check the nitrates, if these get very high they seem to slow the process. If they do, then a w/c resolves.

I have found that when you have nitrite starting to show in decent quantity dump a load of bicarb in the water ( I have pushed the ph up to 8 or higher) and this speeds up the process of growing the bacteria that produce the nitrate as this can be the slow part of the process and as Paul says just do a large WC and checking your parameters are ok before adding fish