Mature your media the Koi way

I hope this dont come over the wrong way or is to boring, I'm not an accomplished writer or trying to teach anybody how to suck eggs.

I've kept fish most of my life and my main hobby is Koi, but I've had a 120 UK gal marine fish only system running for 25 years and it's been run using the old Tunze system.

I've got a lot of building work about to take place indoors and it's time to shut it down, most of the fish have now been moved on but I want to keep a few small ones for the reef that I will be having later this year.

I also have discus in a very small upstairs room where I have my computers, I'm going to shut down there tank (I have somebody coming tomorrow for them) and convert it to marine for a couple of mths.

All the rock in my marine tank is copper contaminated so I will be disposing of that and I'm currently maturing 50 kilos of what is called ocean rock over here.

The rock is currently in a 30 uk gal plastic water tank with about 10 gals of salt water, heated to 20 degrees with 2 Koralia evo 4000's, I've been feeding the rock with ordinary household ammonia, its now @ the 3 week stage where the ammonia eating bugs are up to speed, tne nitrite conversion to nitrate is also well under way in fact its off the scale.

I called this post the Koi way as thats how we mature new filter media over here for any new builds, quarantine or grow tanks.

Why pollute a tank full of expensive salt water when you can get a lot higher bacteria level chemically.

Anyway a few pics I hope as I've never posted pic's on here before!

 

Just a shot of how much nitrite is being produced, I'm also buffering with baking soda.