Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi everyone,

Did anybody here ever successfully tried fishless cycle using food grade ammonia? What is the dosage did you use to start with (litres of water to grams of food grade ammonia ratio)? And how to select the good one since it's available in many brands here in Indonesia?

I used to do it using 25% liquid ammonia that I got from a friend. But I hate to burden him everytime I want to build a new setup and buying ammonia here in Indonesia is very difficult. They only sold in 180 litres package and I wonder how many setup can I build using 180 litres ammonia

Regards
Adi

Welcome to the forum Adi .

I'm not sure about the food grade ammonia since I don't know the difference between that and the regular. Here we just have to worry about whether it has detergent in it or not .

edit - I just did a bit of looking and I see that this would probably be bakers ammonia which is ammonium carbonate, ammonium bicarbonate and ammonium carbamate. The first two would add some buffering of the pH. The ammonium carbamate is the salt of an acid and I'm not 100% on it's affect but it shouldn't be a problem either (it's highly water soluble). I'd probably try it.

I can tell you that there are lots of other things you could use to fishless cycle your system. Pretty much anything with ammonia or that has ammonia as a breakdown product - as long as it doesn't contain something that would kill your bacteria or make the system unusable. You could just toss fish food in and let it break down - might take a bit longer but will still get the job done. Aged urine (no antibiotics) has been used by some. Charley carp is a product used by some of the Aussies if you can find that but something similar would work - (http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=17358). You could throw in some dead shrimp or fish heads and that would get the job done as well (try not to add any diseases in the process). You'll probably get a few other suggestions here as there are lots of ways to do this.

Cheers

Hi scotty435,

I know that there are several ways of doing fishless cycle, but I'm more interested in the input that I can measure the input with and I'm trying to reduce the yuck factor from my daughter since she like to help me and I think it's a good hobby for my little girl as well.

I don't have any background in chemical and I read a lot from this forum about the statement of pH buffering. Would you care explaining it to me? Does it mean that the pH is going to drop because of it? Do you have any solution when it does drop the pH due to the usage of food grade ammonia?

Regards
Adi

Basically a buffer just stabilizes your pH against rapid changes caused by the addition of an acid or base and it buffers within a certain pH range. As long as the pH is within the range that you want, it's a good thing. Some buffers act in more than one range, but between those ranges the pH can change more rapidly. I know that's confusing but it has to do with the buffer itself being altered. When one form of the buffer gets used up the other form dominates and buffers within it's range.

Carbonates are part of the carbonate buffering system and because you'd be adding ammonium carbonate and bicarbonate, this is the system you'd be dealing with (and the one most of us have to deal with because carbonates are pretty common). Adding too much of the carbonate might cause the pH to go higher, the carbamate I'm not sure about what it will do to the pH.

The best way to find out about what's going to happen is to take a known amount of your system water and see how much of the food grade ammonia you have to add to get the ammonia level you want - check the pH after you've got the ammonia level you want. That should be about where the system pH will wind up when you repeat this process for it. Hopefully it won't get above pH 8.5 but 6 to 7.2 is a better range where you'll have more nutrients available for the plants. Each time you add the ammonium you'll be adding more buffer and the pH may go higher.

To figure how much food grade ammonia to add to the main system;

A1 = Amount of food grade ammonia added to reach desired ammonia concentration in test batch
V1 = Volume of system water used for initial test batch
A2 = Amount needed for entire system
V2 = Volume of entire system

A2 = (A1 x V2)/V1

Just plug your numbers into the formula and solve for A2

Over time the bacteria in the system will usually bring a high pH back down and you'll have to add something to keep the pH from going to low. Hydrochloric acid (aka muriatic acid) can be used to bring the pH down sooner but it's best to know what you are doing if you plan on using a strong acid like this and make certain you follow any instructions that came with the product.

If by some odd fluke you needed to raise the pH - calcium hydroxide and/or potassium hydroxide could do this. I doubt the pH will go down using the food grade ammonia - but you might overshoot while adjusting the pH down.

Hope this helps

Hi Guys,

I just want to share my experience using baker's ammonia here.

I have tried the baker's ammonia and managed to overshoot the ammonia level to around 5 ppm using only 1/8 teaspoon on a 50 litres fish tank. So yes it's very powerful indeed.

I have tried to wait for 3 days but the ammonia level didn't change, so I remove all the water from the fish tank but left behind the minimum level of water in the grow bed and replace it using aged water. The ammonia level now is around 1 ppm.

So the lesson here is to dissolve the 1/8 teaspoon of bakers ammonia using around 500 ml of water.

Hi Guys,

It has been 8 days since I start my cycle and I'm noticing the ammonia level is more than 10 ppm and getting worse by the day. I'm testing it using Sera Ammonium/Ammoniak Test since I can't find API tester kit here in Indonesia. And their colour chart supposed to be yellow for 0 ppm and dark green for 10 ppm, but mine is blue.

I started the cycle at the ammonia level around 3 ppm and didn't add any ammonia ever since I start the cycle.

Scotty435 was right about my pH level. My pH level can reach to 8 sometimes but I add phosphoric acid to bring it down to 7.

My current nitrite level is 1 and nitrate level is 25.

Should I do the partial water change?

..
FWIW... A bag of UREA is really cheap.. and safe

And stale piss.. there is a reason why they say it stinks.. YUCK..
..

Hiya thinkingste,

Scotty usually is.

As you are starting to see nitrites the cycle is going, sure you could do a water change if you want but I don't think it is really necessary. At 8 days in you just need a can of patience.

Using phosphoric acid isn't the recommended pH reducer. Hydrochloric or, muriatic acid is recommended as it adds beneficial chemicals for the fish side.

Hope this helps.

Hi skeggley,

I'm glad I didn't do the water change.
My ammonia level today (day #12) is 0.5 ppm while Nitrite level is up to 4 ppm.

What I did since my last post was turned my pump to max speed (double than before) and turn on my emergency aerator 24x7. I was hoping that it can raise my dissolved oxygen to help with ammonia to nitrite bacteria growth.

So now I'm carefully adding more ammonia to maintain 2-3 ppm level and waiting for my nitrite level to 0.