Advice On Setting Up A New Tropical Aquarium

[heavenly_d3vi1]

Hiya, I've recently set up a 50L tropical aquarium, unfortunately I didn't find this site in time and went purely on the advice of my LFS! They said that if I put some filter start ito my tank water, it would be matured immediately and I could safely add fish the next day. So I checked my levels the day after and sure enough I had 0 nitrate and nitrite, so went along to buy some fish. Within a day my levels were sky high, so I started 50% daily water changes which seems to be working, slowly.

I've just noticed a thread about donated mature filter media, which got me thinking, my friend has a cold water aquarium, which he's had running for 4 years now, would some filter media from this help my tank, or should it be media from another heated aquarium?

Also, once I've managed to get the levels in this tank under control, I'd like to set up a second aquarium, this time I'd rather do it with advice from people who seem to know what they're takling about!!! So If someone would be able to guide me through doing it the right way this time, id be very greatful!

 

[Scotty001]

Hiya, I've recently set up a 50L tropical aquarium, unfortunately I didn't find this site in time and went purely on the advice of my LFS! They said that if I put some filter start ito my tank water, it would be matured immediately and I could safely add fish the next day. So I checked my levels the day after and sure enough I had 0 nitrate and nitrite, so went along to buy some fish. Within a day my levels were sky high, so I started 50% daily water changes which seems to be working, slowly.

I've just noticed a thread about donated mature filter media, which got me thinking, my friend has a cold water aquarium, which he's had running for 4 years now, would some filter media from this help my tank, or should it be media from another heated aquarium?

Also, once I've managed to get the levels in this tank under control, I'd like to set up a second aquarium, this time I'd rather do it with advice from people who seem to know what they're takling about!!! So If someone would be able to guide me through doing it the right way this time, id be very greatful!

getting some filter media from your friends cold tank will be fine and do a world of wonders for your fish depending on how much media you can "borrow" you may not need to do a cycle. last tank i set up i took 50% of the new filter media from 1 tank and 50% of the new filter media from my other tank which meant the new tank had a full filter Worth of mature media, filled the tank with water put fish in and done !! no cycle Re as the filter was fully matured. if you can do the same then will help you by no means.

be sure tho that your friends tank and filter can come with the loss of this media otherwise his tank will crash, Re the second part of the question now that you will have a "matured" aquarium AL be it a 50l to set up your second you can either "donate" media from our 50l but will be a small amount depending on how large you new tank will be or, you could run a second filter in the 50l to get that filter to start maturing, I do this for my QT tank, as the QT isnt running all the time and you dont know when you will need it i have a 2nd filter running in my main tank, if and when the QT is needed to take the filter out of the main, put it in the QT fill the QT with water and put fish in it.

Hope this helps a little scott

 

[heavenly_d3vi1]

Thanks very much, you've been most helpful!

 

[Scotty001]

Thanks very much, you've been most helpful!

my pleseure just passing on the help i got when i started out here, theres many people ready and willing to help in all sorts of questions on here.

scott

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yes absolutely get some meda from your friends cold water tank. a mature tank can handle one third of it's media being replaced without needing to worry so get as much as you can, up to a total of one third of the media they have. It's good manners to buy some new replacement media to give to them! If the media is just a sponge in one piece then it can just be cut with scissors it won't make a difference to have two seperate bits of media instead of just one.
treat the media as you would a fish, get a bag or a tupperware, fill it with water from his tank, pop the media into it and get it home and into your filter asap. Only keep it in tank water and do not let it dry out.

It can be tricky to predict the results of a media transfer as there's a lot of different factors, however it should kick start things, after you've added it then test every day, any day where the water readings are over 0.25ppm for ammonia or nitrite then do water changes to get them down, when the water readings are below that then you're fine.

for the next tank what i would recommend is you get the new filter, run it on the new tank in tandem with your existing filter for at least 2 weeks, preferably a month, then set the new tank up, transfer the filter and start adding ammonia as you would for a normal fishless cycle (link in my sig for more info) but you should find that instead of it taking 4-6 weeks it takes more like 4-6 days for the cycle to complete, you may find it is done instantly.

 

[heavenly_d3vi1]

Thanks so much! I really regret not searching the internet for forums before I got my tak now, rather than listen to the fish shop, I just assumed they'd know what they were on about!!

I'd better go and speak to my friend nicely... good idea on buying new media for him b tw, I hadn't thought of that! lol

 

[Miss Wiggle]

aye, if i had a pound for everytime someone said 'i just assumed the fish shop would know their stuff' then i wouldn't be worried over the credit crunch!

bottom line is the fish shop is a business, they have to make money. if they start you out this way then they can sell you some snake oil 'bacteria in a bottle' to get things going, then some disease treatments in a week or two when all your fish start dying, then some more fish when your ones die etc etc. it's much more profitable to do it like that than to give you a leaflet on fishless cycling and a test kit then sell you one load of fish that won't die immediately! Sad but true.

we have a love hate thing with fish shops, without them we couldn't continue our hobby, but we hate the dodgy advice they give out all the time. Thankfully there are a handful of decent shops dotted around so just have a good browse round the shops near you, you can test them out as well by asking for advice on something that you know the answer of to see if they get it right or not! In general terms though there's a few lfs employee's round here who i trust for advice, but the vast majority of things i research on the internet and just use the fish shop as a shop, not an advice centre!

 

[heavenly_d3vi1]

Unfortunately, theres only 1 fish shop around here (im right deep down in cornwall!) I've spoken to a few different staff members there so far, and they all tell you different things! eg, one man said that it would be perfectly fine for me to put a betta and 5mm long neon tetras in my new tank together, a few days later a woman in the same shop, when I asked her what fish would be suitable to put with my betta turned around, pointed at the tetras I have and said definately not these, he'll eat them straight away! Then wen she asked how long i'd had my tank and i said a week, she seemed hugely shocked that I had been to that same shop a couple of days earlier and bought this betta and tetras to go in my new tank because they strongly advise against bettas, tetras and guppies for the first 6 months!

Luckily, my betta didn't eat my tetras, but unfortunately he only lasted a week

There was a petsmart about 20 miles away, but that got shut down last year because of how badly the animals were looked after!

So I guess I'm gunna have to really on you very kind people until im confident enough about these things on my own!

 

[Miss Wiggle]

shame, but no problem we are more than happy to give you all the support you need.

 

[heavenly_d3vi1]

Back again!
My friend has just bought over some of his media in a jar of tank water, but its the carbon stuff.. he says tahts all his filter is meant to have in it. So will this have the bacteria on it still even tho its carbon?

 

[rabbut]

It will have some, but if it's replaced regularly, it won't have a lot. Add it, it won't do any harm, but could bring plenty of benefit Certainly more likely to work than most "bacteria in the bottle" products

 

[Miss Wiggle]

agree with above, it's better than nothing and will hoppefully give it a boost so stick it in

 

[heavenly_d3vi1]

Cool, I'll stick it in with this evenings water change.. I'm pretty sure putting the 'bacteria in a bottle' in my tank has done as much good as putting fairy dust in it lol

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Cool, I'll stick it in with this evenings water change.. I'm pretty sure putting the 'bacteria in a bottle' in my tank has done as much good as putting fairy dust in it lol

yeah that's what we usually expect to happen from bacteria in a bottle....... big bag of nowt!