Am I Cycled?/high Tap Ph

[OldMan47]

Foaming in your water is a side effect to my way of thinking. Although many situations can result in foaming, it is not an essential parameter to me. I am a simple person, if you will, I rely on the simple removal of ammonia and nitrites to tell me that my filter is ready for more than simply one or another chemical. Instead I rely on the final result of ammonia and nitrite testing to tell me that my tank chemistry is OK.

 

[waterdrop]

Agree with OM47, foaming is not a symptom we worry about. Any number of proteins or other organics can be the source of foaming but if it were a common problem that needed to be dealt with I'm sure we would have seen more of it in the hundreds of beginners sessions that come through here each year. Mild foaming, whitish/grayish biofilms, fungus, molds are all things we often see happening in very new tanks, often during the fishless cycle. These things nearly always go away of their own accord and are harmless.

You've stated that you are using an API kit to get your water stats, which is great! From my reading, this still leaves the main concern that you have yet to obtain any simple household ammonia as your ammonia source to feed the bacteria and to simplify understanding of the measurement feedback from the fishless cycling process (organic sources such as fishfood are broken down into ammonia as well but because they take a couple of days to do this, the understanding of what you are seeing in your test readings becomes complicated.) The members here can help with brands of ammonia that work, depending on your location.

As per discussed already in this thread, the add and wait fishless cycling methodology is our method of choice for "qualifying" your biofilter numerically, so that the question of whether your fish will be reasonably safe from gill and nerve damage is answered. A "cloned" or "mature media seeded" new filter treated to a good ammonia source will often "qualify" within less than a couple weeks, if not a single week. The important thing though is to actually do it, to watch it perform "by the numbers."

The way we qualify a filter is to subject it to a 5ppm tank dose of ammonia and verify that both ammonia and nitrite(NO2) have dropped to zero ppm at 12 hours have the dosing and that it can perform this for a week without any mini-spikes or traces of either the nitrite or ammonia showing up at the 12 hour testing time. Although this test is rather rigorous, we've found that it provides reasonable assurance of success after the first stock of fish are added.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Rynofasho]

As an aside, I dont think anyone said it, but a 7.4 to 7.0 pH change won't harm the fish at all.

 

[trianglekitty]

Agree with OM47, foaming is not a symptom we worry about. Any number of proteins or other organics can be the source of foaming but if it were a common problem that needed to be dealt with I'm sure we would have seen more of it in the hundreds of beginners sessions that come through here each year. Mild foaming, whitish/grayish biofilms, fungus, molds are all things we often see happening in very new tanks, often during the fishless cycle. These things nearly always go away of their own accord and are harmless.

You've stated that you are using an API kit to get your water stats, which is great! From my reading, this still leaves the main concern that you have yet to obtain any simple household ammonia as your ammonia source to feed the bacteria and to simplify understanding of the measurement feedback from the fishless cycling process (organic sources such as fishfood are broken down into ammonia as well but because they take a couple of days to do this, the understanding of what you are seeing in your test readings becomes complicated.) The members here can help with brands of ammonia that work, depending on your location.

As per discussed already in this thread, the add and wait fishless cycling methodology is our method of choice for "qualifying" your biofilter numerically, so that the question of whether your fish will be reasonably safe from gill and nerve damage is answered. A "cloned" or "mature media seeded" new filter treated to a good ammonia source will often "qualify" within less than a couple weeks, if not a single week. The important thing though is to actually do it, to watch it perform "by the numbers."

The way we qualify a filter is to subject it to a 5ppm tank dose of ammonia and verify that both ammonia and nitrite(NO2) have dropped to zero ppm at 12 hours have the dosing and that it can perform this for a week without any mini-spikes or traces of either the nitrite or ammonia showing up at the 12 hour testing time. Although this test is rather rigorous, we've found that it provides reasonable assurance of success after the first stock of fish are added.

~~waterdrop~~

I got my ammonia and I'll be doing my first spike today. Thanks so much for the help, from everyone! I'm so terribly scared of killing this little fish, who has already survived so much neglect- I really don't mind doing more work if it gives him a better chance. I never knew how attached you can get to a fish!

The other good thing is I found a proper fish store in my area- the Petsmart/Petcos around here are terrible and I wouldn't get anything from their tanks. They're snail infested and every time I go I see dead fish in the water. But the fish store seems to have healthy stock and he was good about showing me easy fish for a newbie.

So glad I found this forum! If I hadn't, I would have trusted the Petsmart guy who told me to just let the new tank run for twenty four hours before throwing the fish in.