I am a scientist, so here goes...

the question is.. how are you going to test for "mature" fish tank? the number of
bacteria is not a test because you dont know what these bacteria do. you need a
functional test. I would suggest a concentration of ammonia and you need to pretest
for this.

1. control
2. food (Hikari Gold fish food) or any food that releases ammonia within 15 minutes
when put into water.
3. ammonia in same concentration as released by the ammonia above
4. cycle with ammonia same as released above, or, with food
5. different bacteria with ammonia or food as above. my preference would be for the
food. weigh it to get it exactly right. and dont overload the tank.

OTOH, you might drop in a small GF and find out how much ammonia that GF puts out per
weight of food per day.

you need to be sure to keep the temperature the same and you CANNOT just use
distilled water. you must add some RO right or other "salts" or the bacteria will
fail. the pH will swing wildly. BTW, DO TEST THE PH every day too.

Ingrid

On Sat, 1 Dec 2007 03:57:01 -0800 (PST), redsockfluff
wrote:

Hello everybody! I am a BSc student in the UK and for my dissertation
I am comparing 4 different methods of maturing fish tanks and
comparing the amount of bacteria grown on the filter sponges. Tank 1
is a fishless cycle with nothing added. Distilled water (control tank)
Tank 2 is a fishless cycle with 0.30g of food intended to rot and kick
of the nitrogen cycles. Distilled water
Tank 3 is a fishless cycle with Nutrafin Biological Suplement "Cycle".
Distilled water
Tank 4 is a fshless cycle with Bactinettes. Distilled water.

As the water I am using is distilled (due to the terrible limescale in
the tap water here and the fact that the microscope slides I put in
the filter got covered in limescale so I couldnt see the bacteria!) I
am not entirely sure my experiments will work because I am not adding
ammonia to any of the tanks

When using bactinettes and cycle do you have to add ammonia? Because
it doesn't say to on the instructions. Does the fact that i am not
adding ammonia make a difference? If i am just adding cycle and
bactinettes, the bacteria, do I need ammonia in there to sustain their
growth? And if I water test everyday; nitrates, nitrites, pH and
ammonia in every tank each day... will i see any change?

If anyone can make any suggestions or give me their opinion on any of
these points i would love to hear from them and would appreciate it
greatly!

Please excuse spelling and grammar etc, i'm dyslexic!
many thanks,

red