[Azedenkae]

This is a pic of it yesterday night vs. today. Clearing up by itself, without any fine mechanical filter media.

Tossed in three MarinePure spheres from my established tank to seed the tank. Two in the internal filter, one near the sponge filter.

The sponge filter is super noisy, specifically when the bubbles hit the surface so gonna need to figure out what to do there. Though I could actually get the bubbles produced from the sponge filter to go into the wavemaker actually! So at least that idea of mine worked. Just gonna have to wait for my filter floss to come to get everything set up properly I suppose.

For more info on what the heck I am on about, see here. I also keep a full journal here.

 

[Azedenkae]

Try putting an air diffuser in the sponge filter that is rated for fine bubbles. That will cut down on the noise.

I am not being able to imagine what you are describing. Sorry, first time ever using a sponge filter. Can you elaborate?

 

[Azedenkae]

You attach these fine bubble air diffusers to the where it connects in sponge filter. It eliminates the loud large bubbling to a fine mist which dramatically reduces noise. They look like this...

View attachment 142992
There are other brands and some are made of wood. They work well.

Ooooh I see, thanks!

 

[Azedenkae]

Thanks for the recommendations @Auballagh!

With seeding the tank, yeah I did use three established MarinePure spheres from my current tank. Unfortunately I cannot remove too many from it since I feed the tank very heavily and so a lot of biological filtration is needed. Very quick calculation each sphere currently handles perhaps around 0.06ppm ammonia or so a day in a 10gal. Three in a 40gal should be able to handle 0.045ppm ammonia a day (probably less because only two is in the internal filter, one I placed near the sponge filter), so not much to begin with but should be okay to seed the tank. That's why I decided to get FritzZyme 7. The quality of bottled bac products vary greatly, but Fritz is one of those that is proven to work. I did not get the concentrated version, i.e. FritzZyme TurboStart 700 though, so it won't be a super quick cycle, but should still speed it up significantly. My aim is for the aquarium to handle 1ppm ammonia/day, which is normally plenty for a normal stocking even with decent feeding.

And yeah, definitely will keep an eye on the R. lentiginosus in the aquarium. Worse case scenario we are likely to buy a house by September when an upgrade is entirely possible, so hopefully they don't grow too big by then lol.

Also I calculated, and assuming complete conversion of nitrogen in whatever the fish eats to ammonia, and assuming a 50% crude protein amount in said food, then they need to consume 1.4grams or so without using any nitrogen for growth to produce 1ppm ammonia. So should be fine for a while, just need to make sure I am not overfeeding, especially if they will also eat animals in the aquarium.