Afew Quick Questions

[Tyne_Bridge]

Alright, right ive just got afew questions I'd like to ask if thats OK.

Ive been looking at the forum a hell of alot recently, just signed up as I think Im ready to get myself a tank. Ive had tanks before but they were for turtles so im familier with Filters/Heaters, but not so used to fish. Im sorry if my questions are about the forum somewere, Ive proberly read them at some point but im just abit worried incase I do something wrong, i just want to double check so the setting up all go's smoothly


First of all...

Whats the benefits of having live plants instead of artificial ones?

Ive read about the cycle I should do befor buying any fish but font really understand it to be honest, Should I get afew fish at first and slowly build them up? Or should I set my tank up with filter heater and just run in for 4-5 weeks as I would if there was fish in?

I notice some people have shrimps? how do you get them out the tank to clean it?

I noticed someone said they never take the fish out, just carefully do a 25% water change once a week, surely the tank gets dirtyer than that, and bits of rubbish sinks to the bottom that the filter cant pick up?


Thats all I can think of for now, Im thinking of getting a 30l tank, I love this tank..It looks amazing, but could I have fish like red tail shark in it? or just smaller fish? also these seem like they will be very hard to clean?

Thanks for any replys.

 

[Athena]

Firstly, welcome to the forums.

Wow - a lot of questions

Ok, first of all - that spherical tank would be no good for a red tail shark - way too small for it. Yes, there is room for it to swim round and round but they need a good amount of territory space to be happy. And you wouldnt be able to put any other fish in with it. Secondly, yes, it would be a pain to clean out and, thirdly, you can't fit many fish in one of those.

But if you want a similar set up to that in the pic, with a few small shoaling fish, then it'll work. But I still think cleaning will be a hassle.

Re the cleaning of any aquarium - no, you don't take the fish out. Fish get stressed when they are moved and stress leads to illness. You clean the bottom of a tank with a gravel cleaner - it acts like a syphon or mini vacuum cleaner. So you would do weekly water changes usually and a gravel clean every few weeks.

The amount of water you need to change depends on the size of the tank and the stock levels. The more fish you have in a tank, the more water you will need to change. So, a 2ft tank with only 6 small fish in it won't need as big a water change as a 2ft tank with 15 small fish in. More fish = more toxic chemical build up.

Now, about the cycling of your tank. There are pinned notes on how to do this properly in the forums. But, basically, what you said about running a tank for 4-5 weeks with no fish in - no, this is not fishless cycling. Fishless cycling is done by adding ammonia to the tank water in specified doses, to build up the good bacteria within your filter system. Once the bacteria are grown and your tank stat readings are at normal levels (i.e. zero ammonia or nitrite reading) then you can add your fish. A properly cycled tank means you can add a full stock of fish to the tank rather than one or two per week (as with fish-in cycling). Your best bet is to have a thorough read of the notes about the cycling topic in the forum.

Regards - Athena

 

[simplysim]

Hi there

I am fairly new to this site, and I have one of the 30l tanks in the photo.. if im honest, if i had of found this site first i probably would not have got this one, only because I wish now i had of bought a bigger tank as you can only really have 6-8 small fish in it.

It does look lovely and i am pleased with it and wont be getting rid of it in a hurry but if you think that you are going to buy bigger fish and you want more then 8 buy a bigger tank. Im sure i will upgrade in the future.

As for cleaning it, I have had mine since Oct and im not too sure how dirty it can get over time, but i have had no issues with cleaning it or water changes the only problem i did find was when i got my real plants i found it quite difficult to plant the roots under my rocks as i had to do this one handed the hole in the top is not very big.

Hope this helps you out in decided what tank to buy

 

[Tyne_Bridge]

Thanks alot, big help. And as for real plants?

 

[Tyne_Bridge]

People are saying test your water, How? and What should I be looking for?

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, very good advice up there from Athena!

Keeping live plants in the aquarium has been intertwined with keeping fish since the very beginnings of the hobby, which took a big jump up in popularity in the 1850's. Keeping beautiful live plants and growing them successfully can have a rewarding feeling, just like fish, and has even led to a very popular branch of the hobby called "planted tanks." If you want to see how impressive this can get, have a look at some of the pictures over in the planted tank section of TFF.

When we talk about testing, we are referring to testing some key measures of our tank water. The core tests are for ammonia, nitrite(NO2), pH and nitrate(NO3). These are the tests critical for beginners to learn about and do. There are other measures such as KH (carbonate hardness), GH (general hardness), which can also be important in some situations and then there are lots of trace metals and things which are not normally done, but exist.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Schmill]

Just as a quick note, to perform the test's that waterdrop has spoken about most people on here use teh API Freshwater Master Test Kit, which is available in most LFS, and retails on e-bay for around £20.
That will cover you for ph, nitrIte, nitrAte, and ammonia testing which are the 'key' tests, if at some point you have problems with your water you might then need to get a water hardness test, but I wouldn't say it was critical right away.
The test kit is a liquid based one, don't be tempted by the test 'strips' that you dunk into the tank, although 'cheaper' to buy, they give you many less test per £, and also tend to be quite inaccurate.
Lastly.... WELCOME

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Tyne Bridge.
How you test the tank and tap water is by using a liquid reagent type test kit to test for ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. It is also useful to test for pH. The API master freshwater test kit includes all the tests you will need and is well thought of.
You should be posting the numbers that you get so that we can help you figure out what kind of fish would work best in your water and whether there is anything that would need special attention in your tap water.
As you asked in your first post, you will be limited to fish that do not get very big. The fish stay in the water while you do water changes because it is very stressful for them to be chased around the tank with a net. Tanks do get a bit dirty but can be a very healthy environment for the fish even with a small amount of fish waste on the gravel. The spherical tank will probably mean that you have visible dirt on the curved lower part of the tank.
Plants will only be an option if you can figure out how to get enough substrate to anchor them and how to get enough light for plants to thrive.
Your next step, before getting any fish, is to figure out which way you want to go about cycling your tank. The method called fishless is much less work but does require some patience on your part. A fish-in cycle lets you add fish right away but is much more work for you and can be more difficult to do. There are links to threads on both subjects in my signature area.

 

[Tyne_Bridge]

What a bunch of friendly people, thanks alot.

 

[Joinerlavin]

I was going to get one of them tanks, its a Biorb tank, they have an inbuilt special filter, but the woman at my LFS said that they dont supply them because they are impossible to keep fish alive in because the filters are in a cartridge which you replace once a month, so no good bacteria can be built up, hence the fish allways dying.

 

[Tyne_Bridge]

Alright everyone, hope im not battering your head with these questions, Im just trying to swat up on as much as I can befor I get a tank.




-The Cycle, ok so I get a tank...a filter..a heater, then run it for about a month, how does the cycle start without fish? surely im just gonna be pumping fresh water around for weeks?


-what would you do if your filter broke? arnt you just back to square one again?

 

[Schmill]

Alright everyone, hope im not battering your head with these questions, Im just trying to swat up on as much as I can befor I get a tank.

No worries, always the best way

-The Cycle, ok so I get a tank...a filter..a heater, then run it for about a month, how does the cycle start without fish? surely im just gonna be pumping fresh water around for weeks?

Sort of... you have to add ammonia to the tank to make it cycle, see this topic for a good read

Fishless Cycling

-what would you do if your filter broke? arnt you just back to square one again?

Sort of, you would want to get a replacement filter as soon as possible, then it would be possible to salvage the bacteria from the broken filter (via a process called filter cloning), and stop the toxins building up in the water. (This will probably make more sense after you read the fishless cycling thread )

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yup you need to get away from the idea of just leaving a tank to run for 4/5 weeks, you're quite right you'd just be pumping the water around and not achieving anything.

what you are trying to achieve by cycling is to grow two different species of bacteria in the filter media, now these bacteria are present in our tap water in minute quantities, you need to basically make the water in the tank into the right sort of 'soup' to encourage the bacteria growth and you then get a test kit and test the water periodically to monitor the growth of the bacteria. Now you can't actually test how many bacteria are there so you test tehm by monitoring their effect on the water.

fish make waste in the water which is in the form of ammonia, this is toxic to fish so you need the first species of bacteria (we'll call them ABacs) to get rid of this ammonia. So to start growing this species of bacteria we simluate the fish being in the tank by adding pure ammonia to it, we keep testing this and topping it up every day and when the bacteria can process 5ppm of ammonia into 0ppm within 12 hrs then we know we have enough ABacs in the tank.

the by-product of this process is nitrite, the ABacs will eat up the ammonia and spit out nitrite, this is also toxic to fish so we have to wait for the second species of bacteria to grow, we'll call them NBacs. So when the first bit of the process is going out,, you'll test the water every day and see that nitrite starts to rise up, after a bit it'll start to drop down again which means you have some NBacs there eating it all up. So again we wait until you get to the point where you add 5ppm of ammonia and both ammonia and nitrite read 0ppm 12 hrs later, then we know that the bacteria colonies are in place and will be able to handle a full load of fish in the tank so you can then go out and get yourself some fishies safely.

So to summarise -
buy a test kit and a bottle of pure ammonia
set the tank up and fill it with water
add ammonia up to 5ppm
test the water every day and when the ammonia has dropped to 0 you top it back up
keep testing every day, anytime that ammonia goes down to 0 you top it back up to 5ppm
after a few weeks of this you'll be adding ammonia every day, then you start testing 12 hrs after you add the ammonia, when you find that both ammonia and nitrite read 0 after 12 hrs the tank is cycled
keep doing this for 1 week more to be safedo a 90% water change
add fish!

have a read of the link in my sig 'fishless cycling' which gives a much more detailed guide which you should follow, sometimes it helps to udnerstand the basic principle before you read the guide though! also the link in my sig 'whats cycling' may help you understand it a bit more.