Newbie Needing Help And Advice Please!

[waterdrop]

in theory, that car behind you in the picture should always win out over the greyhound, particularly if it has a lot of passengers and their luggage

 

[Miss Wiggle]

how many passengers do you get in a single seater race car do you reckon?!

although to be fair for a ride in one i'd cling onto the back or whatever, don't mind not having a proper seat.

 

[waterdrop]

oh no, its only the little race driver with her helmet in the F1 car, but she's passing the Grayhound Bus (loaded down with passengers and luggage) at high speed, possibly flipping the Greyhound a gesture with the gloved hand...

 

[Miss Wiggle]

lmao

having a slightly random day are you?!

 

[waterdrop]

lmao

having a slightly random day are you?!

No, its YOU, MW! The bus represents the current economy and that's YOU, getting to make the glove gesture on the way to the dog racing track where you're going to win. See, I'm trying to cheer you up. Don't you feel better now?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

oh that was far too obscure WD!! No chance of me getting that in my current emotional/mental state

don't though, it's too depressing talking about F1 right now, don't know if you know much about the sport but in the UK Silverstone is the home of the British GP but they just announced it's being moved so next year's is the last British GP at Silverstone, Ian was going to be getting me a ticket for my christmas pressie...... that won't be happening now.

I'll be so devastated if I don't get to go see my lovely cars zipping around there!!

A am feeling a bit more positive today anyway, Ian has got a potential job lined up (not definate yet and a pay cut from what he was doing, but more money than we'd expected) and I seem to have found a really good recruitment agency today so fingers crossed the offers will start to roll in.

 

[B13]

<-- *loves F1*

My Big Bro lives near Silverstone and while tiz a shame it's moving, he's actually quite happy about it!!




Back on topic for a bit...


I've been reading a couple of threads here where folks have been offering to supply mature filter media to noobs (which is great!) so... if you compare something like StressZyme to matured bacteria (for want of a better term!) how good a substitute is it?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yay another F1 fan, but yes lets drag this back onto topic kicking and screaming

ok so on a scale of 1 to 10, mature media donation is not quite 100% effective but pretty good so that'd be a 9, stress zyme is about a -20

bacteria is a living organism, it can't just live in a closed off bottle with no food source sat on a dusty shelf in the fish shop for years on end! Added to which half of the products out there which claim to have bacteria in them actually had the wrong species put in in the first place. So in most cases you'll get a small amount of ammonia from some dead bacteria that weren't even the right ones in the first place. Helpful!!

Now there are exception to the rule, in the UK the one product that has even a small reported sucess rate is Bactinettes, it's kept refrigerated which slows the lifecycle down so it stays alive longer and it has a shelf life, so once it's got to the point that there's no hope of anything still being alive it's taken off the shelf and slung. Now bactinettes is by no means a miracle cure, it's probably got about a 50% sucess rate and it's near enough impossible to track down and expensive when you do.

So if you can get hold of some then by all means try it, but don't expect it to work and fix everything.

If you've already bought any bacteria supplements then just dump the whole lot in the tank in the hope that there may be some small amount of bacteria still left alive. But don't waste your money on something like stress zyme if you've not already got it. It's not going to do you any good.

 

[B13]

on a scale of 1 to 10, mature media donation is not quite 100% effective but pretty good so that'd be a 9, stress zyme is about a -20

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Oh dear...

Here's me hoping it would have got a 5. Or even a 3!!!




( I was also going to ask the question, "Why don't they tell you about 'cycling' in fish shops?" I then immediately thought of the answer, "Coz then they wouldn't sell so much stuff coz most folks couldn't be arsed..." )


On average, how many newbies like myself have ever heard of cycling when they come in here?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

there's the combination of the old way of doing things still being publicised by shop keepers who just don't know about fishless cycling, and secondly there's the cynical side of things that running a fishtank properly is not all that expensive, if they give bad advice you'll be back for medicines, they can sell you rubbish miracle cures and more fish when yours die.

 

[B13]

Nick16 has just offered to give me a mature filter foam from his tank set-up. He lives nearby, so I can nip round there with a new one for him.

It's for a different make and model to my filter, but he reckons I can cut it to fit. Or I've read that just squeezing out the water from the foam into the tank works too - if the foam can't be made to fit, is squeezing it out a good second option?




(I'm so sorry for all the daft questions - the only thing I can say is that in return, I promise to help other newbies in the future!!)

 

[Miss Wiggle]

firstly don't worry about the questions, the only silly question is the one that you don't ask. so fire away! but yes we always like it when people stick around to help us out with the next lot of newbies who come along with the same questions.

yes just squeezing out the media might work, but again on your scale of 1-10, getting the media into the filter is a 9, getting some squeezings of water is maybe 1/2.

just cut the media to size and cram it in however you can!

 

[B13]

Right!! Will definitely do!!

I won't know until tomorrow what my totally ridiculous work schedule is gonna be like for the rest of the week/weekend (I work in TV, so nothing is ever 'normal'...) but as soon as Nick and I can work out a suitable time and day for a swap, I'll be over there like a SHOT!!!



So once the mature filter foam is in place, what should my maintenance schedule be? (Apart from putting the StressZyme and the not-very-helpful test kit in the bin...)








...and now I'm off home to see how the fishes are... *gulp*

 

[waterdrop]

When you get mature media (lucky!) you don't make any changes to your fishless cycle. You just hope that it jumpstarts the cycle, moving it way ahead and getting you closer to the qualifying stage. You'll want to keep logging ammonia, nitrite and pH morning and evening and occassionally nitrate(NO3). The final goal with fishless cycling is to be able to raise the ammonia level in your tank to 5ppm, note the clock time, then have it drop both ammonia and nitrite to zero ppm within 12 hours or less of when you put the ammonia in. Once it does that you know you are in the qualifying phase and you should watch it do these "drops to zero" for a week to verify that it is stable.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Miss Wiggle]

When you get mature media (lucky!) you don't make any changes to your fishless cycle. You just hope that it jumpstarts the cycle, moving it way ahead and getting you closer to the qualifying stage. You'll want to keep logging ammonia, nitrite and pH morning and evening and occassionally nitrate(NO3). The final goal with fishless cycling is to be able to raise the ammonia level in your tank to 5ppm, note the clock time, then have it drop both ammonia and nitrite to zero ppm within 12 hours or less of when you put the ammonia in. Once it does that you know you are in the qualifying phase and you should watch it do these "drops to zero" for a week to verify that it is stable.

~~waterdrop~~

with fish WD, not fishless!

you basically do the same as you are doing now, you want ammonia and nitrite to be at 0, if that's not possible then definately under 0.25ppm. So you just keep monitoring water levels every single day and doing water changes as needs be to keep them there.

what you'll find with the media is that instead of daily water changes for the next 4 weeks or so, you'll maybe have to do it for 4 days.

There's a lot of variables so it's impossible to predict exactly what will happen, but you're basically giving it a big kick start.