Cycling New 5-gallon Aquarium with Household Ammonia:
A Success Story
by Greg Bunch

Background

I and my significant other have had a 29-gallon marine aquarium running for about 2 years. It is a fish-only system with a few snails and crustaceans. I use a Lifereef overflow box, which I highly recommend. For filtration, I built a 10-gallon sump using a $9.00 glass aquarium from Wal-Mart which has worked very well, and on which I'll post a complete report later. The sump incorporates a filter sock for mechanical filtration, 2+ gallons of bio-balls for biological filtration, and a CPR Bak-Pak protein skimmer. The return pump is a Mag 7, the output of which is teed back into the sump through a valve so I can adjust the flow. The return is a homemade PVC spraybar.

We are both staff divers at the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans, and instructors for the Reef Environmental Education Foundation (REEF). I produce several underwater accessories for underwater cameras as well as research, and have gotten lucky with my camera a few times over the years. (Take a look at www.gbundersea.com if you're curious.) My better half is a marine biology student, and the driving force behind the REEF Field Station of the Northern Gulf of Mexico (www.reefngom.org) which we co-founded. We long ago decided that we would only display animals in our home aquariums which we collect ourselves. We're on a tight budget, thus have put a lot of effort and ingenuity into the techniques and equipment necessary for safely collecting and transporting our animals. While we've had disappointments and made some mistakes, overall our animals have done well.

The need for the 5-gallon aquarium came about when I collected a young Sargassumfish (Histrio histrio) on a research trip. This species must be isolated, since they're a voracious predator capable of swallowing fish their own size! We intended to set up the 5-gallon as a species tank for this one fish. Prior to setting it up, we kept the fish in a 1-gallon holding tank made from a Rubbermaid food container (thanks again Wal-Mart!) plumbed with a bulkhead fitting for gravity return to the main tank. Inflow was supplied by a small Rio submersible pump I placed in the 29-gallon tank.

The 5-gallon aquarium itself is a Regent Galaxy 5, purchased from (guess where?) Wal-Mart for $39.95. It is an acrylic aquarium whose hood has an integrated filter and fluorescent light. Regent is obviously Eclipse's companion brand sold through Wal-Mart and perhaps other mass merchandisers, as the system is virtually identical to the Eclipse 6, and the Eclipse name appears in the manuals which come with it. The kit includes dechlorinator, filter cartridge, setup instructions, basic how-to guide, and flake food. All in all, I was very impressed. The filter utilizes a cartridge containing charcoal, and a bio-wheel for biological filtration. The documentation states that the pump has a certified flow of 75 gph.

I did a lot of extensive research and reading on the Internet regarding fishless cycling. One of the main resources I used is James Koga's article on the subject. To me fishless cycling is the only way to go. I found the ammonia at Sav-A-Center. It is the America's Choice brand, which is clear and contains only DI water and ammonia. DO NOT use the yellow variety, which is very common in many stores. It contains lemon scent and coloring. Be careful, as I have also recently seen clear ammonia which also contained other additives, so read the label carefully!

Public aquariums cycle new tanks using ammonium chloride, which is probably available from high end aquaculture suppliers or other sources. If the proper household variety can't be found, then this is a viable option.

Below is the chronology of how we cycled this new tank. For testing, I used Salifert kits, then bought Aquarium Pharmaceuticals kits from my local fish store as a backup, since my Salifert kits were about a year old. The Salifert kits are great, although I was also impressed with the AP kits given their price. Salifert's ammonia kit is very susceptible to lighting when you're reading it. You need to use the same good light source every time, with the light coming from slightly above and over your shoulder. Direct light from overhead seemed to lighten the solution's appearance so much that a significant false low reading could result. The vial must be held so that the white background on the color chart is behind the entire vial. I found that not doing so would cause the reflection of whatever was behind the color chart to alter the appearance of the test solution. Salifert needs to provide glass vials instead of the plastic ones. After multiple uses, the ammonia kit's vial became discolored by the reagents, even though I cleaned it thoroughly after each use. It wasn't quite enough to cause a false reading, but it was unsettling nonetheless and should not happen. The Aquarium Pharmaceutical kits gave readings close to those of the Salifert kits. I must say that AP's color-change indication is very clear, while deciding on a "shade" of the same color can sometimes be rather subjective.

In summary, after 13 days this method had produced, in 5 gallons of water, a bacterial colony capable of
completely metabolizing 3ML of household ammonia each day in about 11 hours!

Epilogue

After unsuccessfully searching online catalogs and other stores for a realistic sargassum, I remembered that we had some beautiful sargassum in one of our exhibits at the Aquarium. A quick phone call, and I learned about Bio Models, who makes top-quality, incredibly realistic artificial plants for many public aquariums. Quite often, quality does not come cheaply. The sargassum is priced and sold in 100 gram units. Thankfully, one unit was perfect for our needs, since the price for each 100 grams is $66.00! However, in this case, we definitely got what we paid for, and it was worth every penny. When it arrived, I rinsed it and soaked it overnight in RO/DI water to remove any possible contaminants. Carl Gage, owner of Bio Models, said this was probably unnecessary, but not a bad idea given the small size of the tank and just to be safe. When I removed the temporary store-bought plants and put the first piece of sargassum in, the fish swam over and took hold of it before I could even anchor it to the bottom! She loved it, and it made an incredible display.

Our beloved sargassumfish (Histrio histrio.) About 8cm in length.

The sargassumfish took to her new home very well. I had collected her on May 9, 2002, and she'd been living in the holding tank since May 12. When I collected her, she was about 3cm (1.25") in length. Since then, she'd grown to about 7-8cm (3".) These animals will eat anything, including each other. At first, we fed her live grass shrimp, which are available at our LFS. Later, though, I painstakingly trained her to eat thawed fresh shrimp, from which I'd removed the heads.

On June 30, 2002, she bloated severely. I was afraid she'd overeaten, but I was always very careful not to overfeed her or give her too big a shrimp. I'd found one reference which said that these fish will sometimes eat something so large that it decays before it digests, releasing gas which will bloat and kill the animal.

The next day, I found the reason for her bloating. She was back to normal, and next to her was a huge gelatinous mass of eggs! It was twice her body size. We moved the eggs to a breeder in the main tank, in the unlikely event they were fertile, but they were not. From then on, she'd lay a similar mass of infertile eggs about every week or so, blowing up like a puffer, then shrinking back to her normal self once she laid them. In fact, she laid a batch the day after relocating to the 5-gallon tank!

The sargassumfish continued to grow and eat very well. She'd see us coming with the food, and move into position! She laid another batch of eggs on July 22, 2002, and about a week later, swelled up again as usual. This time, however, the eggs never came. She continued to get bigger, but was still eating and acting normally until July 30 or 31, when she wouldn't eat. At around 8:30PM on July 31, we saw her suddenly convulse, dart violently around the aquarium, and stop, dead.

We performed a necropsy on our beloved fish. Her digestive system looked perfectly normal. However, there seemed to be remnants of old eggs in her egg sacs. After speaking to several marine biologists, we think she had become eggbound - essentially, the fish gets "plugged up," the eggs can't be expelled, and so they decay internally and cause a fatal infection. I think also that something probably ruptured due to the pressure from the massive fluid buildup, given the sudden violence of her death. One of the Aquarium staffers said in his experience, they'd always had trouble keeping this species alive longer than a few months. He said they live a short intense life, producing prodigious amounts of eggs constantly. I knew beforehand that they have a very high metabolism and live only 2-3 years at most. I suspect that a male specimen would probably do better, since the stress of producing all those eggs must be a huge strain on the females of the species.

We miss our sargassumfish dearly, but at least know we provided a good environment for her. We repopulated the tank with several smaller fish which had been in similar holding tanks. They are a bluehead wrasse (Thalassoma bifasciatum,) a twospot cardinal (Apogon pseudomaculatus,) and a goldspot goby (Gnatholepis thompsoni.) We had a yellowtail reeffish (Chromis enchrysurus) in the tank as well, but put him back into holding after the wrasse got very aggressive towards him.

We keep the fish load low, and do fairly frequent water changes of about 40%. So far, all the inhabitants seem quite pleased with their home!

I welcome all questions and comments. Please email them to me at gbundersea@cox.net. I hope to soon post the details of my 29-gallon tank's inexpensive DIY sump, and of the DIY sump/filter I'm currently trying to find the time to finish so we can get our 120-gallon tank up and running! I suffered a serious setback when I made the mistake of buying acrylic sump containers from Jen's Saltwater Haven (Jensalt.) They were so poorly built as to be unusable. After Jensalt refused to refund my money or even acknowledge the problems, I broke them up and threw them away. You can see all the details on my sump horror story site.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I hope you found it useful.

Greg Bunch
gbundersea@cox.net
http://www.gbundersea.com