Adding Fish At End Of Fishless Cycle

[Lufbramatt]

hi,

I have just about completed the fishless cycle of my little 11 gallon tank which I have set up as a Tanagyikan shell dweller tank. I'm consistently getting double zeros so we went out on saturday and finally managed to find a local aquatics centre that stocked the cichlids I wanted (lamprologus brevis) so I put a deposit down to reserve them in order to pick them up on thursday afternoon as I finish work early before Easter. The shop was Living reef aquatics in Dartford, stunning shop with very well kept tanks and very friendly service, much better than the dingy, slightly messy shops I have become accustomed to! I'll defo be going back there as they had a great selection of African cichlids, both malawi and tanganyikan, as I want to set up another, bigger tang tank in another room.

My water seems ideal for tangs as throughout the cycle the pH hasn't dropped below 8.2 even though the nitrates are off the scale!

My question is what is the best procedure as regards the big water change to get rid of the nitrates before I add fish. I was thinking weds night as I am going to pick the fish up straight after work on thurs. does that sound sensible? Do I need to add any more ammonia after the water change to keep the bacteria going, or is it best to "fast" the tank for a bit before adding fish?

 

[Tizer]

fasting the tank will only starve the bacteria and it will die, fish do produce ammonia at quite a fast rate, so i wouldnt be too worried. Perhaps to the water change a few hours before, let it get up to temp then add your fish.

 

[Lufbramatt]

there will be about 19-20 hours between doing the water change and getting the fish home, I cant really do the change a few hours before as I'll be 50 miles away from the tank at work!

hmm not sure what to do now, might see if they're open over the easter weekend instead so i can reduce the time gap a bit

 

[Rorie]

there will be about 19-20 hours between doing the water change and getting the fish home, I cant really do the change a few hours before as I'll be 50 miles away from the tank at work!

hmm not sure what to do now, might see if they're open over the easter weekend instead so i can reduce the time gap a bit

Just now you will be adding ammonia daily, right? Well all you need to do is keep adding the ammonia daily, then the next day dont add ammonia, but do a 99% (as much as you can get out basically) water change. Dont add ammonia. The next day add the fish.

I do not believe your filter will die so much in 24 hours! How many fish are you planning on adding? The last thing you want is any trace of ammonia in your tank from the cycle!

This is the method i used for my 360L and added 60 fish in one go. No spikes or anything, worked a charm! I would also like to point out that the fish i added were cardinal tetras! So some of the wimpish fish you can get haha.

The reason i would change your water the day before is so it can settle down. If you PH is going to change after the water is added (as it does in my tank due to CO2 and the substrae) i would rather this happened before the fish go in....though i guess it will be a gradual change anyway. It also gives the water temp a chance to settle.

 

[waterdrop]

Oh yeah, you are worrying too much. The bacteria will do fine without ammonia for 24 hours or even more, that's no problem. You may even need to do more than one large water change to completely stir out the nitrate from your substrate. The method where you partially refill and then gravel-clean it back down to the subsrate again will often help clear even more nitrates, which is nice for the first introduction.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Rorie]

Oh yeah, you are worrying too much. The bacteria will do fine without ammonia for 24 hours or even more, that's no problem. You may even need to do more than one large water change to completely stir out the nitrate from your substrate. The method where you partially refill and then gravel-clean it back down to the subsrate again will often help clear even more nitrates, which is nice for the first introduction.

~~waterdrop~~

+1 i had to do 3 water changes for my nitrate to drop!

 

[Lufbramatt]

thats great info, thanks for your replies. At the moment I'm just dosing with 2ml of ammonia every day. I think I'll stick with thursday to get the fish, can't wait to get the little guys home!

So the plan is, multiple water changes on weds night, dont add any more ammonia, then its got overnight to settle down and get up to temp. think I'm clear now!

 

[CrazyAirborne]

take pics once u get em home! good luck!

 

[Lufbramatt]

thanks to everyone that helped on this thread. turned out the shop was open on friday so i did the water changes on friday morning, then let it settle and get up to temp while i took some garden junk to the tip then drove over to dartford in the afternoon to pick up the brevis. They took an hour or so to "come out of their shells" quite literally as they came with the shells that had been in the shop tank but they have now staked out their territories and are great fun to watch dart in and out of their shells and guard their little patch of tank floor. The male has changed "his" shell after initally grabbing one of the escargot shells, he ventured a bit further over the other side of the tank and found the biggest shell which is now his

Fed them this afternoon after they had been in the tank for 24 hours and it was brilliant, initially they went and hid, but once they smelt food it was like a little easter egg hunt while they went and cleaned up all the pellets. don't think they missed any! After being used to my girlfriends dad feeding guppies at the top of the tank with flake food it was a real eye opener to the difference in feeding habits.

Have done a couple of tests for ammonia and nitrite and haven't had a reading above 0ppm which i'm well chuffed about so thanks TFF for the brilliant, easy to read guides and helping me set up my first tank with no issues and hopefully setting me up for a long involvement in the hobby.

 

[waterdrop]

Thanks for the report and glad you are having fun. Keep a daily eye on ammonia and nitrite for the next couple weeks before slacking off, then enjoy watching the tank mature. In my opinion tanks often reach an ideal feel at about 6 months and then maintaining that "6-month-look" gets a tad harder but is doable if you keep after it.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Lufbramatt]

Thanks for the kind words waterdrop. Been testing every day and water stats consistently double zeros. Did a 30% water change tonight just to hoover up the sand and keep it looking tidy. The brevis' are really good fun, especially at feeding time!

The original plan was to set up the little shellie tank upstairs first then set up the 29 gal tank my dad gave me downstairs as a community tank. But these guys are so entertaining, I'm going to set the 29 gal up as a mini tanganyikan community, move the brevis down into the lounge with a pair of small julies as rock dwellers. Then i can just use all the media from the current cycled tank in the Eheim 2322 thermo filter I got from the classifieds on here to run the 29 rather than having to do another fishless cycle.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Thanks for the report and glad you are having fun. Keep a daily eye on ammonia and nitrite for the next couple weeks before slacking off, then enjoy watching the tank mature. In my opinion tanks often reach an ideal feel at about 6 months and then maintaining that "6-month-look" gets a tad harder but is doable if you keep after it.

~~waterdrop~~

WD,

I'd like a little information on this, if you don't mind. (Perhaps not in this thread, but a new one.) A lot of energy has been put into helping folks with new tanks, and rightly so, but not much is around for helping to maintain a PERFECT looking tank. I've heard the comment about a mature tank at a certain age being ideal, but what causes the tank to go from maturing and improving to drop off? What steps need to be taken to continually maintain that "6-month-look", as you call it?


Is it as simple as a 90+% water change, and careful scrubbing of the glass? Is it more along the lines of carefully replacing the filter media with new - but being careful not to replace too much, too fast and causing a mini-cycle? Any insights into this would be greatly appreciated.

 

[waterdrop]

I do have some thoughts on this.. but need to go.. please remind me elsewhere to come back to this eagle as i'll likely forget

 

[eaglesaquarium]

I do have some thoughts on this.. but need to go.. please remind me elsewhere to come back to this eagle as i'll likely forget

Will do...

 

[waterdrop]

I do have some thoughts on this.. but need to go.. please remind me elsewhere to come back to this eagle as i'll likely forget

Will do...

OK, here we go again with a few: There are many, many tasks and tricks to maintaining a beautiful tank. On TFF you are sitting among all sorts of people who keep beautiful tanks of various types. Probably lots of the quiet people keep the most beautiful tanks and the ones who like to write, like me, are behind in the game, lol. I myself, by the way, want to keep learning how to do this better.

If we think of cycling as main skill number one, then main skills numbers two and three are more important for keeping the tank beautiful in the long run. They are the substrate-clean-water-change and the act of adding filter maintenance on to one of those water changes.

For the record, the stuff discussed here is for "after fish." Perhaps the very first action after you put your big towel on the floor and lay out your gear is to sponge down all the inside glass to remove the beginnings of any glass algae. Do it even if you can't see any. I use pieces of white Fluval replacement sponges for this because I like their level of "scratchiness" but most of you will probably have algae scrapers you like and those are fine. A good next step is to sponge any algae off of all your larger leaves if you are seeing any there. The idea is to get all this stuff loose in the water just prior to the water change. If this is a weekend you are feeling ambitious about the decoratios, take them out and clean them under sink tap with a sponge or brush, whatever. This is an occasional or as needed thing. Then perform the usual substrate-clean-water-change.

It should be noted here that NOT doing the weekly clean of this sort is the -main- thing that begins to take the tank downhill. These weekly cleans are perhaps THE most powerful maintenance habit (and by the way a wonderful exercise in discipline for young people to learn as a life lesson.)

OK, so another special thing I like to do is pick some ODD thing to clean each week in addition. For instance, one week clean the glass top. One week clean the lighting systems. One week clean out your cabinet. One week clean your outside tank glass. Whatever! It also makes that week more interesting and gives you a good feeling. Some people never quite get that tanks are made to be fussed over and when you see beautiful ones, they didn't just stay that way by themselves!

OK, I'm not going to go over filter maintenance here (you can search my thousands of past posts lol) but it is of course critical too. And another ODD but key thing is very periodically to do a full clean of your hose system if you have external cannisters. This is major work by the way and periodically you should replace your hoses before they get old, stiff and fail on you.

OK, gotta run again! The TFFers will have lots more where this came from! (how come my laugh emoticon never laughs anymore? lol)

~~waterdrop~~