The dark start method

The dark start method

By Eduardo Fonseca

2022/01/12

 

Dark start method consists of assembling the hardscape with a fertile substrate, filling it with water and keeping the filter operating without photoperiod, without CO2 and without plants present in the system for a period that can vary from a few weeks to more than a month in order to already have nitrifying biology when the aquarium is planted under photoperiod regime. And then we have a question: does the dark start method really work or is it just another crazy theory without much foundation? We will study how this works in this article.

Starting the aquarium is the most critical moment in the setup. We supply energy to a system that is not yet ready to take advantage of it but depends on it to adapt. And right now, we have the worst villain of all, ammonia, and in large quantities. In fact, the chances of the aquarium failing in the match are very high. Sometimes the project is not lost, but the problems arising from these adverse conditions put the aquarist on a much longer and uninteresting route to finally getting his aquarium back on track.

As I have described in more detail in the article titled “How to Start a Planted Aquarium” and also in Book 3, the number one priority of start up is to get the biofilter to work as quickly as possible to get rid of the ammonia and thus avoid the explosive combination of light + ammonia = algae bloom. And so, some aquarists wisely ask themselves: does it make sense to start the tank in the dark to mature the biofilter first and provide light later? Yes, it makes a lot of sense!

The classic start with the aquarium immediately planted, with light and CO2, is complicated because the reducing parameters for plant development are opposed to the more oxidizing parameters for the establishment of nitrifying colonies. The aquarist tries to stay in the middle, with a slight priority for the colonies, as plants growing, producing metabolism, and at the same time competing with the algae for space and resources, are useless. Algae tend to win this contest. Based on this, some aquarists try to start up their aquariums lending mature filters from other aquariums, to give more priority to plant development.

 

 Figure 1 – Quite typical problem of starting under light. Brown algae indicate the presence of nitrite that is not yet being oxidized to nitrate.

Definitely, the priority in start is biological filtration and in this sense we should not bother the system with metabolism before it is able to recycle its residues. In fact, these residues do not refer only to ammonia, although this is the most harmful, but also to soluble iron, which is still very mobile in the substrate, as well as aluminum, manganese and silica, and very concentrated macronutrients, especially nitrogen and phosphorus. When the aquarium leaves, the substrate needs to “mature”, that is, to establish and stabilize its layers, so that the most oxidized and inert ones are on top and the most reductive and chemically active ones are below. Even if ammonia were not a problem, this disordered substrate activity is enough to cause an algae outbreak, since the massive presence of nutrients associated with light, which still does not stimulate plants metabolically (in the case of plants still in the emerged state that need to adapt), opens a great opportunity for the proliferation of faster and less demanding organisms.

Therefore, starting in the dark not only serves to advance the establishment of nitrifying colonies, but also to chemically stabilize the substrate. After a few weeks, all or a good part of the ammonia that is mobilized from the substrate is already being nitrified by the biofilter and the colonies can grow faster under much more favorable conditions which would be impossible to establish when it is intended to stimulate the metabolic rate of the plants. What conditions are these? These are already detailed in Book 1, but basically, they are higher KH, higher temperature, higher pH, higher oxygenation and another important factor commonly overlooked or even unknown by aquarists, space.

Space refers to the availability of physical space in the media, which may be populated by heterotrophic bacteria before nitrifying colonies. These bacteria grow about twenty times faster than nitrifying bacteria and appear where organic carbon from decomposition processes is present. In other words, they’re everywhere there is dead organic tissue, whether it’s dead plants, feed, and animal feces. When I say animal feces, I do not mean only fish, but also and mainly snails, which are almost always present in the startups, multiplying very fast, living on the discards of plants in the adaptation phase to the immersed form. Do you think snails get little dirty? Try setting up a 20-liter aquarium with some of them and see the heavy mess they make. They are big polluters of the planted aquarium, and their proliferation depends a lot on the plants. If there are still no plants in the dark start period, they can even emerge by hatching dormant eggs present in the substrate, but they won’t have anything to eat and therefore won’t be able to multiply very quickly. This greatly alleviates the organic load produced by the aquarium and reduces the chances of dragging too much debris into the media. Taking the opportunity, here are two more tips: use a pre-filter to prevent too much particulate from reaching the media and also use activated charcoal during this period, it can be in a bag suspended on the glass itself, to help retain organic carbon.

 Figure 2 – Aquarium with problems in the starting phase with metabolism.

Perhaps now it is opportune to open a parenthesis here: I don’t know if the appropriate name would be dark “start” method, because, for being a planted aquarium, the start itself only happens with light to provoke metabolism. In theory, the aquarium is not “alive” yet, even with the colonies already established, so there is still no ecosystem, only a fragment of it, in the same way that only a chassis cannot represent a car. But it doesn’t matter, once this maneuver, let’s say, sets the stage for the real strating with light, it ends up being a pre-starting. This is just a theoretical question that may cause confusion later with other questions. Anyway, I’ve already left the eyelets here in case you need to close the seams in case of any confusion. What is important to keep in mind for this moment is that the aquarium, during the dark start, still has no metabolism, no consumption, no rhythm and is not producing, therefore, it is not yet alive. Close parenthesis.

 

 Figure 3 – Green algae are more typical of more mature aquariums.

So if we see so many advantages to starting an aquarium in the dark, why the hell didn’t we think about it before? Why not. How long did it take to put wheels under the suitcases? I bet Einstein and Tesla walked through many airports dragging suitcases around the world without ever having thought about it. But one day someone thinks about it and, as in the book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (I don’t like his works, but this book is really very good, perhaps the only one worth anything), you discover that you are sleeping on top of the treasure all the life without realizing it. Not that starting the tank in the dark solves all the problems of the planted tank, but it helps a lot and saves a lot of time, money and patience. It’s like moving a truck out of place in third gear. How many aquarists have failed and given up on the planted tank because they never won the “start” phase? Those who are more experienced know that running an aquarium in production is much easier and requires much quieter behavior than an aquarium in the start-up phase. This method of starting in the dark can make obsolete any and all efforts in wanting to start an aquarium with metabolism (with light and plants right from the start), as there are no contraindications. I can’t think of any condition in which this method is not indicated, ie disabled with the exception of dry start method.

It is impossible to run the dark start method by before or after the dry start method when it comes to propagating carpet plants, but it can be possible when it comes to just mosses. We don’t know if mosses, once established and mature, can survive that long without photoperiod living on only very little or no indirect light, this is something someone needs to try to find out, but it’s also a matter of common sense and priority: leaving in the dark with mosses represents yet another concern for the aquarist who may want to speed up a process that cannot be speeded up. Between making it easier to fix moss and closing carpets against maturing nitrification, choosing nitrification is the wisest choice. However, still in this context, one could try to follow the logic of proceeding with the dry start and using mature filters from other systems, without passing the aquarium through the dark start. Wouldn’t that be equivalent to the biofilter going through the start in the dark? No, simply because the immigrated biofilter has a population of bacteria proportional to the ammonia production of that system which, once it has matured, will correspond to a very low percentage of the ammonia production of a starting aquarium. It will be necessary to increase the number of colonies, and only ammonia sustains this population, making this effort the equivalent of practically starting a filter from zero. So, make no mistake, a mature filter coming from a stable system does not correspond to a start-up filter sufficiently to sustain a start under light. This kind of relativized reasoning is present in many dimensions in the planted aquarium and is where most people fail. Most people think in a binary way, like, “my filter is mature, so it’s okay to start an aquarium under light” and don’t take into account the grading of things. IT IS NECESSARY TO UNDERSTAND THAT THE COLONIZATION OF THE BIOFILTER CORRESPONDS TO THE AVAILABLE AMMONIA SUPPLY IN THE SYSTEM, in the same way that the number of lions in a territory corresponds to the quantity of prey present in that territory. Why is it so easy to understand when it comes to lions and zebras, but not colonies of bacteria and energy substrates? Things are not that complicated, in fact, they are very simple.

Since these doubts are all clarified, let’s go back to the method in question…

“How to conduct the method?”, “How long should it run in the dark?”, these are the questions that would immediately arise. Well, the speed with which colonies will establish and grow depends on many physical-chemical factors as we have already seen, but assuming that everything is done correctly, I imagine that after a month it will be enough to turn on the lights, plant the aquarium and provide CO2. It is important to point out that these conditions must be met for everything to work out and it is not possible to know if the aquarium is ready to turn on the lights. Water doesn’t change color or smell to know; you must gain experience. The tests won’t say anything and what they say is not reliable, because the amount of ammonia enough to mess up the whole process is less than the uncertainty of these tests, it’s below their sensitivity, so in practice they’re useless. The same for measuring nitrate, nitrite, silica, or phosphate; no one wants these nutrients to go to zero during the substrate stabilization phase in the dark. What could be read no one knows whether it is too much or too little, so drop that idea. There is no scale for these things.

Figure 4 – Nitrifying bacteria populating biological media seen under a microscope.

Also don’t believe too much in “biology accelerators”. These products, if they really work, do not accelerate the establishment of colonies, but their growth. You can plant a square foot of grass and wait years for an entire city block to be covered, or you can plant twenty square feet and expect a lot less. However, the time it takes for grass to take root and produce green leaves before it can spread is the same when planting one or ten square meters. People need to understand this. With the biofilter it is exactly like that, you can expect the bacteria naturally present in the system to populate the entire media space or you can add more units of these bacteria, but you cannot accelerate the period necessary for their establishment. If grass needs sun, water, and fertile soil to establish itself faster (and not more grass), the biofilter needs the physico-chemical conditions to do the same, otherwise “biological accelerators” are just wasted money. It is important for people to understand that no product, without the aquarist’s wisdom, can accelerate anything in the planted aquarium, like a magic potion. And I hope that anyone reading this understands once and for all that adding fish to an planted aquarium early based on these “accelerators” is a big risk and that kind of risk is an irresponsible mistake totally unnecessary.

In conclusion, dark start is a great method for planted tank startups, but it only works when you know what should be included in this method. This method began to be practiced recently, at least to my knowledge, by some aquarists who studied and understood several theoretical foundations to the point of simply putting wheels in their suitcases. It is an evolution in the practice of the planted aquarium and in no way is it a myth or practice with irrelevant advantages. Several experienced aquarists are working this way with their systems and are experiencing similar results.