Water Changes to Speed Up Cycling
- Thread starter MOA
- Start date
the problem i see with this is that it is based on equations, i have know idea how valid they are. Add bacteria will help, but if they are the right kind and are alive which i belive is hard to get from the store. Which is why people get gravel of filter media from other tanks. As for the water changes what are you removing or adding that helps the bacteria grow faster? you can write formulas to do anything if you know what you are doing.
Hello,
The formulas were developed with the help of the College of Southern Idaho and are based on fairly well-known principles. However, the formulas were not meant to be precise, just accurate. That is, the specific values will vary depending on the specific tank, but the relationships between the values will be pretty consistent.
For those of you who like math, the base formulas for the bacteria populations are just logistic differential equations:
dy/dt = k*(1-y/m)
Where m=the concentration of waste at any given time.
For the chemical compositions, they are the differences between the bacterial populations:
ammonia = waste - bactrite
nitrite = bactrite - bactrate
nitrate = bactrate...since bactrate produce nitrate
MOA
The formulas were developed with the help of the College of Southern Idaho and are based on fairly well-known principles. However, the formulas were not meant to be precise, just accurate. That is, the specific values will vary depending on the specific tank, but the relationships between the values will be pretty consistent.
For those of you who like math, the base formulas for the bacteria populations are just logistic differential equations:
dy/dt = k*(1-y/m)
Where m=the concentration of waste at any given time.
For the chemical compositions, they are the differences between the bacterial populations:
ammonia = waste - bactrite
nitrite = bactrite - bactrate
nitrate = bactrate...since bactrate produce nitrate
MOA
Hello,
Here is a link to a spreadsheet that uses the same formulas as the examples in the tutorial vids: Cycling Theory.xlsx
The base relationships are based on the principle that a) bacteria grow both in proportion to their population and the availability of food sources and b) and that ammonia to nitrate conversion occurs as depicted by the equations found at the following link (other sources have equations that are fairly similar): Nitrification, from ammonia to nitrate
The sticky point is how waste (the ammonia source) is calculated in that waste can either be a static function, linear, or geometric. A static function is not very realistic in that most of the ammonia would be used up before bactrate could develop (a generic name for all the bacteria that convert nitrite into nitrate, bacteria-nitrate). Contrarily, a linear model for ammonia is what most people use when fishless cycling and is well-documented. Lastly, the geometric function occurs when water is removed at specific intervals at a specific percentage. When this occurs, the waste input levels out instead of continuing to rise. This means that ammonia is cut down a bit (sometimes a lot if the cleaning frequency is high enough) and the overall cycling process is cut down.
MOA
Here is a link to a spreadsheet that uses the same formulas as the examples in the tutorial vids: Cycling Theory.xlsx
The base relationships are based on the principle that a) bacteria grow both in proportion to their population and the availability of food sources and b) and that ammonia to nitrate conversion occurs as depicted by the equations found at the following link (other sources have equations that are fairly similar): Nitrification, from ammonia to nitrate
The sticky point is how waste (the ammonia source) is calculated in that waste can either be a static function, linear, or geometric. A static function is not very realistic in that most of the ammonia would be used up before bactrate could develop (a generic name for all the bacteria that convert nitrite into nitrate, bacteria-nitrate). Contrarily, a linear model for ammonia is what most people use when fishless cycling and is well-documented. Lastly, the geometric function occurs when water is removed at specific intervals at a specific percentage. When this occurs, the waste input levels out instead of continuing to rise. This means that ammonia is cut down a bit (sometimes a lot if the cleaning frequency is high enough) and the overall cycling process is cut down.
MOA