Emergency tank

[melzee81]

I got some female guppies and swordtails yesterday. I have many females with the gravid spot hone from pale black ( cloudy looking) to solid black and bigger. I currently have 3 in breeding tanks but have another tank set up today to put them in to give birth / rest.
The tank came with live bacteria and says you can put fish in after 4 hours! How reliable is this?

 

[Sgooosh]

I got some female guppies and swordtails yesterday. I have many females with the gravid spot hone from pale black ( cloudy looking) to solid black and bigger. I currently have 3 in breeding tanks but have another tank set up today to put them in to give birth / rest.
The tank came with live bacteria and says you can put fish in after 4 hours! How reliable is this?

Not true, just cycle the tank

 

[melzee81]

Not true, just cycle the tank

Thankyou, I will do that

 

[Essjay]

Or take some media from one of your other tanks, and get some floating plants. I 'cycled' a quarantine tank with just 2 large water sprite plants and 2 bunches of elodea/anacharis left to float. That was a 25 litre/6.5 gallon tank with 12 kuhli loaches, so something similar with livebearer fry should work as well.



These bottled bacteria products don't cycle a tank instantly, they just speed up the cycle. If you have some, you may as well add as it won't do any harm. But mature media and plants will work faster.

 

[Sgooosh]

I got some female guppies and swordtails yesterday. I have many females with the gravid spot hone from pale black ( cloudy looking) to solid black and bigger. I currently have 3 in breeding tanks but have another tank set up today to put them in to give birth / rest.
The tank came with live bacteria and says you can put fish in after 4 hours! How reliable is this?

Not true, l

Or take some media from one of your other tanks, and get some floating plants. I 'cycled' a quarantine tank with just 2 large water sprite plants and 2 bunches of elodea/anacharis left to float. That was a 25 litre/6.5 gallon tank with 12 kuhli loaches, so something similar with livebearer fry should work as well.



These bottled bacteria products don't cycle a tank instantly, they just speed up the cycle. If you have some, you may as well add as it won't do any harm. But mature media and plants will work faster.

but if op wants a purpose for the thing they can help the cycle evn with the old media and stuff rite

 

[Essjay]

Old media from another tank can also be used to seed a fishless cycle so that it goes a lot faster.

 

[melzee81]

Thankyou for the replies. Is it cycled when the test strip comes back normal?
It's been just under a week. I put a plant from main tank in, and live bacteria that came with the set up. Test strip reading normal, very slight nitrite but in normal levels

 

[Essjay]

A tank is cycled when -

Fishless cycle - ammonia and nitrite are zero 24 hours after adding a 3 ppm dose of ammonia
Fish-in cycle - when ammonia and nitrite have both been zero for 7 days.

If there are no fish in a tank making ammonia, or no ammonia has been added from a bottle it is impossible to say whether it is cycled or not.

 

[melzee81]

A tank is cycled when -

Fishless cycle - ammonia and nitrite are zero 24 hours after adding a 3 ppm dose of ammonia
Fish-in cycle - when ammonia and nitrite have both been zero for 7 days.

If there are no fish in a tank making ammonia, or no ammonia has been added from a bottle it is impossible to say whether it is cycled or not.

Thankyou, I thought that about the Ammonia.
I might add a couple of guppies as they are Hardy. I'm not interested in adding loads of fish, it's literally just a maternity hospital

 

[Essjay]

With mature media from another tank, and if possible some floating plants it should be OK as a nursery tank. You just need to check ammonia and nitrite every day till you are sure they are staying at zero.