Bacteria Starter Kit?

[waterdrop]

Actually, fishless cycles do go very nicely with a bare tank or even a bare tank wrapped in black plastic to block light. It's just that usually there is a family involved and often someone in the family will rebel about a black tank sitting in the room for weeks. The blacked out tank keeps you from getting algae and also helps the bacteria grow a little since they grow best in the dark.

In your situation it might be good to start with fish food dosing and continue to search for the right sort of simple household ammonia. An ammonia dosed fishless cycle is much more easily controlled and understood, which is why we do them instead of straight fishfood cycles. As mentioned, we know the best places to find the right ammonia in the USA and in the UK but in other places we've had people find success at universities and pharmacies/chemists or sometimes other businesses. The solution is typically less than 10% concentration of pure ammonia gas in distilled water (often called aqueous ammonia) and it's important that it not have dyes, fragrances, surfactants or other soap additives. When you shake it you should see a few big bubbles for 2 or 3 seconds just like water, rather than seeing foam. Anyway it is very much worth the search for the right ammonia and the members often enjoy hearing how this goes and offering suggestions.

There are several other things needed besides ammonia. A good liquid-reagent water test kit is necessary. Most of us like and use the API Freshwater Master Test Kit or the Nutrafin Mini-Master Test Kit. There are also Salifert individual tests that are slightly more involved but also more accurate and reliable in some instances. Don't get paper strip tests, they are worse than useless, the results can lead to wrong decisions. Along with any liquid test kit it is good to get a syringe from a pharmacy to help you get the required 5ml or so of water in to the test tube easily. If you find ammonia then it's good to get two syringes. A good conditioner is important. Many of us like and use Seachem Prime for this, especially for the first year or two as it can give some additional help for beginner mistakes. The main purpose of conditioner though is to neutralize the chlorine or chloramines that the are put in tap water (this assumes you use tap water.) During cycling I recommend that beginners dose conditioner at 1.5x to 2x whatever the instructions tell you, but not more than 2x conditioner overdosing.

Sorry, I know that's a lot of little details but often it allows you to look back later for things. The members here are great so they'll help you as you go along.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[fluttermoth]

So the bacteria will only start to grow as soon as there is a low count of amonia in the tank??

Yes; the good bacteria won't grow unless they have food to eat, and that's ammonia. You can get the ammonia all sorts of different ways; the household pure ammonia is one; fish food is another; leaving a prawn tied in a piece of net hung in the tank is another (smelly) way of doing it.

But how do i remove the roten food from gravel? or should i add the food to rot without any decoration in the thank?

You can fishless cycle with a bare tank, just the heater and filter; you can even cycle a filter in a bucket; it's the ammonia and the bacteria that are important; everything else is irrelevant in all honesty.
It's probably easier to do the cycle with a bare tank, or as Smells a bit fishy says, just do a really good clean before you add the fish; you'll have to do a massive (90 or 100%) water change anyway to remove the nitrates that have built up during the cycle.

Good point fluttermouth. That's why your a legend haha. Forgot about rotting food.

Aww, you've made me blush now! I've just been keeping fish for a long time; before anyone even knew what a 'cycle' was, lol!


P.S; It's flutterMOTH, you know, moth; like in my avatar

 

[Marius]

Lots of info,im starting to get the point. Ill try my luck tomorrow,hopefully some stores will be open. How will i know when i have enough bacteria in the filter and wont the bacteria die with new water,cuz the fish poo will probly take a while to produse amonia?

 

[waterdrop]

Knowing whether you have enough of the two types of bacteria is called "qualifying the biofilter." The technique for this is different for Fishless versus Fish-In cycles. Basically, you want the filter to go about a week where you are testing every day for both ammonia and nitrite(NO2) with a good liquid test kit and find that it is not ever showing any ammonia or nitrite.

In a Fish-In cycle, you are hard at work changing lots of water so that the fish never see exposures to the ammonia and nitrite poisons above 0.25ppm. Eventually you will no longer see even the small 0.10 or 0.20ppm traces and at that point you more or less start your qualifying week and hope that you continue to see "double-zeros" (zero readings for both ammonia and nitrite) without you having to change any water over that week.

This of course happens at the end of a cycling process. Usually a cycling process takes anywhere from 25 days to 70 days or so but they vary wildly, so there is no predicting how long an individual one will take.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Smells a bit fishy]

So the bacteria will only start to grow as soon as there is a low count of amonia in the tank??

Yes; the good bacteria won't grow unless they have food to eat, and that's ammonia. You can get the ammonia all sorts of different ways; the household pure ammonia is one; fish food is another; leaving a prawn tied in a piece of net hung in the tank is another (smelly) way of doing it.

But how do i remove the roten food from gravel? or should i add the food to rot without any decoration in the thank?

You can fishless cycle with a bare tank, just the heater and filter; you can even cycle a filter in a bucket; it's the ammonia and the bacteria that are important; everything else is irrelevant in all honesty.
It's probably easier to do the cycle with a bare tank, or as Smells a bit fishy says, just do a really good clean before you add the fish; you'll have to do a massive (90 or 100%) water change anyway to remove the nitrates that have built up during the cycle.

Good point fluttermouth. That's why your a legend haha. Forgot about rotting food.

Aww, you've made me blush now! I've just been keeping fish for a long time; before anyone even knew what a 'cycle' was, lol!


P.S; It's flutterMOTH, you know, moth; like in my avatar

So sorry flutterMOTH. I do apoligise. I mis-read your name. I won't be making that mistake again

 

[Marius]

ill stick with the fishless cycle. Sounds much saver. How mush food should i put in to rot ?

 

[waterdrop]

That's the first thing hard about fishfood cycling, there's no telling how much to put in. Try a couple of healthy pinches. It may take several days for the heterotrophic bacteria to break this down and for you to then get a reading to give you an idea of what it did.

One of the major differences with using fishfood versus using household ammonia is that it is very difficult to achieve the 5ppm "finish" concentration that allows you to fully stock a tank straight away after the fishless cycle (not that many do that.) Instead, with fishfood method you have usually only acheived a 2ppm or maybe 3ppm final level and it is better to begin stocking only with a "fish-in cycling" sort of bioload such as 3 or 4 fish and then slowly add, just as you would do with fish-in cycling.

 

[CrazyAirborne]

I bought my ammonia from a DIY store, what I would call a hardware store, in the cleaning products area. A place with a large selection of cleaning products would probably have common ammonia.

 

[Marius]

Ill go and check if i can find any. We have a fountain outside,lots of plants in,amonia level is 0.6,that to few to take that water in a extra tank and cycle the filter in there?

 

[Marius]

i got cloudy amonia,looks a bit soupy when i shake it,strong smell,this wont work?

 

[Smells a bit fishy]

Ammonia should be clear. So by the sounds of it it isn't the right one.

However ammonia does stink something cronic. It also feels like it burning your nose as well

 

[Marius]

jap it did that for sure,but i gone with the fish food,what temp should my water be for best bacteria growth and my ph?

 

[Marius]

What should my ph be? its a dark blue and my test kit doest show that dark of a blue,but i guess its close to 8 cuz 7 is a blue and it stops there.. Can i trust the colour of this image,it looks right

 

[eaglesaquarium]

The magic numbers are 8 and 4. temp: 84 F (~29 C) and pH: 8.4.

 

[Marius]

OKey ill try to keep it around there