Fishless pond cycling.

[fishin4cars]

Ever wondered about really doing the cycling of a new pond with only straight household ammonia? Anyone have any experience on input on doing this? A friend of mine just cranked up his new pond and we are attempting doing this. Monday after the water had been in the pond for a week. All leaks and issues had been addressed. New skimmer, filter falls, and a bog almost a third of the size of the pond at the surface area. We started adding 1 cup of ammonia at a time until we reached 1.0 ppm,( 3 -1/2 cups) then after 24 hours the ammonia dropped to .50 after a big rain and we added another cup to get it back to 1.0ppm. That was last night and I'm waiting a report. My plan is to get him to add a filter sponge from an established pond but I'm not sure when the best time to add it would be? My thinking wait until I start seeing nitrites. Also, Would the additions of plants in the bog be a good or bad idea at this point? My thinking, wait.
I'll try to update regularly to allow everyone to see how this develops out.

 

[Mucky_Waters]

WAIT! how can you cycle a pond without adding store bought bacteria from a bottle?

 

[milhousebarks]

WAIT! Did the ammonia come out of a bottle? If so, this will never work?

But seriously I look forward to your results. I would be inclined to put in some water hyacinth, but that's just me.

 

[fishin4cars]

I've tried bacteria from a bottle when cranking up a pond. Didn't speed up the process much, I didn't add any fish or ammonia prior to adding it. NEVER saw the ammonia or nitrite spike. Other than that I really didn't see much difference than the old fashion way of adding a few fish and waiting it out.

 

[Lisaebetten]

WAIT! how can you cycle a pond without adding store bought bacteria from a bottle?

I can see you have a brick in your hand!

 

[Mucky_Waters]

I've been taking some waste water treatment courses for the past while and learning a lot about the similarities between treating waste water and treating pond water, and when is comes to aerobic bacteria, the similarities are nearly exactly the same. I've been working in a remote camp and befriended a couple of the fellows who operate the small waste water treatment plant for the camp and I'vebeen picking their brains on how they do things. One interesting tidbit of information I gleaned is they also need to cycle their plants when they start them up because they of course also rely on an active bacterial colony to digest the waste that flows through their system, and if they don't do something use something to kick start the bacteria colony their system isn't able to handle the waste (poop) when it starts flowing through.
In ponds (and aquariums) people sometimes use ammonia for this, sometimes they just pee in the pond (my personal favorite), sometimes they'll use feeder fish, and sometimes they'll just dump fish food in the pond with no fish. Well these waste treatment guy use something similar to the later, the one fellow showed me a big bag of dog food and bottles of molasses. That what they us to feed and just start the bacteria in their waste treatment systems. And I asked him too if they have any sort of bottled bacteria product that they prime their system with when starting it up, and he said no, he wasn't aware of any product like that. However, the during the time that I've been working out here they brought in a new larger treatment plant that they have not yet at this time set up. I did a tour of the facility and asked questions about how they would be starting it up. I asked him if they would be using the dog food and molasses and he said no. In this case, because they already have an existing treatment system out here with active bacteria in it, they would simple pump some of the active waste from the old system into the new one , and that's how they would be jump starting the bacteria colony in the new facility.

 

[Mucky_Waters]

Interestingly, another thing they do in waste water treatment facilities is recycle or recirculate active waste.
When raw effluent comes into a plant it does already have active bacteria in it, but sometimes there just isn't enough waste product to really get the bacteria culture going. In other words there is too much water and not a high enough percentage of food (poop) to get a good bacteria culture going, so what they do is recirculate the concentrated waste which by this time have a good healthy active bacteria culture living in it. In this respect a waste treatment plants actually copy what we do in our ponds all the time, because we are constantly recirculating our "waste" water.

Anyway, Larkin I think I may be hijacking or sidetracking your thread too much, I look forward to hearing about your results of cycling your friends pond with ammonia.

 

[Mmathis]

Interestingly, another thing they do in waste water treatment facilities is recycle or recirculate active waste.
When raw effluent comes into a plant it does already have active bacteria in it, but sometimes there just isn't enough waste product to really get the bacteria culture going. In other words there is too much water and not a high enough percentage of food (poop) to get a good bacteria culture going, so what they do is recirculate the concentrated waste which by this time have a good healthy active bacteria culture living in it. In this respect a waste treatment plants actually copy what we do in our ponds all the time, because we are constantly recirculating our "waste" water.

Anyway, Larkin I think I may be hijacking or sidetracking your thread too much, I look forward to hearing about your results of cycling your friends pond with ammonia.

No, your posts here are interesting and complimentary, Mucky....

 

[minnowman]

If you add nitrite(sodium nitrite) at the beginning it would speed up the process because the bacteria for nitrite conversion normally don't start reproducing until the ammonia eating bacteria have created enough nitrite.

 

[JohnHuff]

the small waste water treatment plant for the camp

What does a small waste water treatment plant consist of? I got interested in these things too in the course of my reading up on treating ponds. In Japan, they sell small systems for homeowners that you can bury in the ground.

 

[Mucky_Waters]

What does a small waste water treatment plant consist of? I got interested in these things too in the course of my reading up on treating ponds. In Japan, they sell small systems for homeowners that you can bury in the ground.

There's definitely a lot of similarities in the biological treatment of waste water and treating pond water, at least the when it comes to aerobic bacteria. Some waste water system do use anaerobic bacteria to treat waste water as well though, in fact the well known "septic" tank system that many people have in their back yards is based on bacteria that thrives in an oxygen free environment.
The waste water treatment systems they use around camp here are all aerobic systems, and they use powerful aerators to oxygenate the crap out of the waste water, literally. LOL The system I'm most familiar with has about 7 large tanks that have these aerators in them, except for the first one which is a settlement tank. After the aeration tanks there is a membrane chamber which acts as a mechanical filter, but also has biological activity going on in there. It is from this tank that the solid waste build up, that doesn't go through the membrane, get recirculated back to the first settling tank. This stuff that gets recirculated is "activated", which means it's rich in active bacteria and helps inoculate the raw waste coming into the system. What does filter through the mechanical membrane next goes through powerful UV sterilizers and is discharged on to the ground in drain fields. Apparently the effluent that goes through the membrane filter and UV system is safe for human consumption, but so far I haven't seen anyone drink it. It still has a light brown tinge to it.
The thing that I was most curios about was that they are utilizing aerobic bacteria, same as we do in ponds, but the bacteria live in free floating water, they don't have any media in their tanks, or at least not this one I'm most familiar with. This isn't to say that no wastewater treatment facilities use media for the bio-film to grow on, in fact many of the large ones use gigantic Trickle Filters, and Rotating Contact Filter which both utilize surface media, exactly the same way our pond bio-filters do.
BTW, the treatment system that I have become familiar with is sized for a 90 man camp. The camp is expanding to 400 man and they have another larger package treatment plant sitting out on the lease in sections, but they haven't set it up yet.
The 90 man one looks like the one in the bottom picture from the outside.

 

[JohnHuff]

the bacteria live in free floating water, they don't have any media in their tanks,

I've never seen a commercial one without media. I didn't think that bacteria could be free floating that much.

 

[Mucky_Waters]

I've never seen a commercial one without media. I didn't think that bacteria could be free floating that much.

I didn't think so either, but it obviously works, in fact their systems work better (per square foot) then other similar container plants. Much of their success seems to be based on their final Membrane Bioreactor.
"Compared to conventional activated sludge systems, newterra MBR treatment solutions require only one quarter of the area."

 

[JohnHuff]

I didn't think so either, but it obviously works, in fact their systems work better (per square foot) then other similar container plants. Much of their success seems to be based on their final Membrane Bioreactor.
"Compared to conventional activated sludge systems, newterra MBR treatment solutions require only one quarter of the area."

According to what I read, it's your basic conventional system (3 moving bed reactors) in that diagram, plus membrane filters producing "near potable" water. You still need the basic bioreactors. The MBR is the finishing touch.

It says that "newterra MBRs eliminate the need for the final stages of conventional wastewater treatment plants, including clarification and filtration."

Well, it doesn't really eliminate it, it replaces it. If you're eliminating something but adding something else, you're just replacing it.

What I do like is that the whole system is containerized, that the MBR units are tiny and I love this high tech membrane. It's also great that the filter is constantly cleaned by air bubbles. I wonder how much a single MBR unit costs and can a simpler DIY unit be made. For pond purposes, we won't need such a fine filter, but I love the idea of an air bubble cleaning filter. It would completely save the need to clean filters.

(Just another thought regarding near potability. Another way to get that might be to use heat from the bioreactors to evaporate the last stage leading to "pretty potable" water but that would really depend on ambient temperatures.)

 

[Mucky_Waters]

According to what I read, it's your basic conventional system (3 moving bed reactors) in that diagram, plus membrane filters producing "near potable" water. You still need the basic bioreactors. The MBR is the finishing touch.

It says that "newterra MBRs eliminate the need for the final stages of conventional wastewater treatment plants, including clarification and filtration."

Well, it doesn't really eliminate it, it replaces it. If you're eliminating something but adding something else, you're just replacing it.

What I do like is that the whole system is containerized, that the MBR units are tiny and I love this high tech membrane. It's also great that the filter is constantly cleaned by air bubbles. I wonder how much a single MBR unit costs and can a simpler DIY unit be made. For pond purposes, we won't need such a fine filter, but I love the idea of an air bubble cleaning filter. It would completely save the need to clean filters.

(Just another thought regarding near potability. Another way to get that might be to use heat from the bioreactors to evaporate the last stage leading to "pretty potable" water but that would really depend on ambient temperatures.)

It the diagram represents the unit I've seen here, those are essentially just empty tanks with aeration systems in them. No moving bed media.
I understand what you are saying about replace not "eliminating", but I guess the point they are making is they are eliminating the standard conventional final stage treatment which takes up a lot more room to accomplish the same things as their MBR.
Anyway, I think we can agree that having no media in those aeration tanks seems odd, but it must work or these systems wouldn't exist.