Aqaurium Noob

[Rancid]

Hey there guys. I've recently started up my own aquarium & thought I'd hang with the pro's & hopefully learn a few things.

I just had a few questions to ask.. mainly about my aquarium plants. I just kinda jumped into this and didnt really ask many questions about them before I bought them (stupid move, I know)

Naturally.. they are slowly rotting and polluting my tank. Before I continue I'll explain what I've got.

I bought a 225L tank (about 60 gallons), it has a 225W heater set to about 27 Degrees Celsius.
It has a pretty nice filter that pumps lots of air into the tank, and it has 2 lights in the lid.

There are no fish in my tank yet, I'm still going through the cycle. With any luck I should be able to put one or two in, in a few days.

But first I wanna get this plant issue sorted.
I have included some photos to offer a bit of insight.
The close up of the red plant is my main concern.. it looks like it's rotting. I suspect it's not intended for my setup.

My water also has an odd residue, when you touch it and rub your fingers together it's almost as if there's weird friction I can't quite describe.

The bottles are everything I use in my tank so far.

Attachments are being odd so I uploaded all my photos to this imageshack gallery.

Gallery

Thanks for any help you guys can offer, I look forward to getting to know you all ^____^

 

[BethK]

Is that bogwood you got in there?

If it is,the teabga type coloring would be from that.

 

[Wills]

Welcome to the forum and the hobby! Thats a nice looking tank what make is it?

You have joined the forum at exactly the right time! Right at the start, people make about 90% of the worst mistakes in the hobby right at the start because of bad advice from pet shops but we can help you work out exactly what you need to do to get this tank started!

First thing you need to know is that the bottles like stress zyme are useless. The bacteria they claim to hold has been dead for weeks and is just not doing anything at all when it gets in the tank. So when you add this for 2 weeks your actually doing nothing for the filter apart from starting it a little but its in no way suitable for fish yet as there will be really big amounts of ammonia and nitrite that is produced by the fishes poo, thats what you need the filter to be ready for. So what we recomend to do and have all done is whats called a fishless cycle -

When fish are in a tank with an established filter there is a constant cycle going on in the water called the nitrogen cycle which starts with fish poo which creates a poison called ammonia which is then processed by a bacteria colony into a lesser poison called nitrite which is once again processed into reasonably harmless nitrate. But in the early stages of a tank there is no bacteria to cope with the fish poo and the resulting poisons, so two routes to consider the first is fish in cycle which just uses fish poo to cycle the filter but that exposes the fish to high levels of poison and can easily kill them - and as a result you need to keep up with daily large water changes esentially to keep the fish alive. The other option I mentioned earlier which is fish less cycling is much much easier and deals with much less death and disease. The process simply bypasses the fish poo part of the cycle by adding a small quantity of pure ammonia which you can get from most hardware stores. You then measure the levels of ammonia and nitrite in the tank for a number of weeks and then it makes the tank ready for fish. Obviously the downside is that you have to wait about 5 or so weeks to add fish but the possitive is that when you do add fish to the tank you will be able to garuntee that your water is 100% safe and the fish are going to live well.

Hope that makes sense For more info there is a section called the beginners resource section here and that has a lot of interesting articles on cycling a tank among many other good subjects new fish keepers need to know about.

Wills

 

[Rancid]

Beth: Yeah it's a piece of driftwood I picked up from a pet store. I soaked it for about two weeks in hot water to get rid of all the gunk. I'm certain that's what the colour is from. I'm not too worried about that. Fish apparently like it, and I find it adds a bit of realism to my tank.

Wills: Thanks for the warm welcome and information =D
I'm a little bummed that the Stress Zyme is useless, though I'm not 100% convinced. I've looked up several sites and yahoo questions about it & they all say it serves at least a small amount of purpose.
I don't have a testing kit yet so I don't really know for sure if it has benefited my tank. (I really need one but a master testing kit is like 70 dollars.. I'm only a uni student and this whole setup has already cost me a fortune)

The make is Avico, I got it for a steal. $730 down from $1300.

The issues about my plants still worry me however.. I don't want them dying and algae'ing up my tank.

Does anyone recognize these plant types perchance? Any insight would be a huge help

 

[chrisbassist]

Hi, welcome,

You're right about the colour from. The wood. It's nothing to worry about and will stop eventually anyway.

As for the plants, you're best bet is to ask in the planted section. However I'll say what I do know which isn't a lot.

There's 2 main ways to go with plants. High tech and low tech. High tech involves injecting co2, having extremely powerful lights etc.
Low tech will give slower growth and some plants aren't suited to it. But basically this is where the lighting from most tanks falls. Between 0.8 and 1.5 watts per gallon. Leaving lights on around 8 hours a day. It may be that the plants you chose aren't really suited to The low tech approach. Or that they don't have a nitrogen source in the tank to feed on.

Right. As for cycling. Wills is right I'm afraid. Take a look through the beginners resource section.

Look at it this way. Even if that bottle does have some surviving bacteria or whatever, how long will it live with no food? And since you have no fish, and you're not adding ammonia, it doesn't have any food. And the die off rate is about 10% a day. So whatever you added 2 weeks ago, it's dead by now.

Hope that helps

 

[Rancid]

Awesome thanks a lot, I'll post this in the plants section =)

 

[jacko32]

i think the red plant you have is this Alternanthera Reineckii

when buying plants you also need to know weather your water is hard or soft and the pH range as plants which like hard water will rott in soft water and the same with soft water plants in hard water