Beneficial Bacteria Question

[netcode]

Hello there everyone. I am fairly new at fish keeping and was quite excited when i got my first tank which was 65 gallons(go big or go home). I prolly didn't do the required reading before i put my fish in as i thought it was a fairly simple thing to do. Well i have read tons and tons of info on this forum, this is the best collection of information about fish that i have seen yet. Anyways i see that i missed a few important steps when setting up my tank. My biggest concern is that i never did a fishless cycle of my tank to allow the beneficial bacteria to grow. I did however leave my tank running with filter(Aquaclear 70 which includes a BIOMAX filter insert which apparently promotes ammonia and nitrite reduction) and all for about a week before i put in my fish. My question is should I be concerned about ammonia and nitrite build up due to lack of this beneficial bacteria? Also is there anyway to tell if this stuff is growing? I am in the process of buying a test kit so i can obtain the levels of everything but i am low on money and it could be a week or two.

Also another question regarding bacteria and other living things. I put in a piece of drift wood into my tank that i found in a lake. I sprayed it down with tap water and scrubbed it with a sponge but from what i have read it is a good idea to place it in hot water. Should i be worried about anything on the drift wood as I didn't properly clean it?

PS. the tank has been up for about 3 weeks now and the only thing so far that gives me an indication that my tank isn't doing so well is the outbreak of this brown algae.


Any answers are appretiated. thanks

 

[mark.w.jones]

You should definitely be concerned about nitrite and ammonia build up in your tank as in the beginning there will not be enough beneficial bacteria to deal with your fish waste. Get that test kit asap. Aquarium pharmaceuticals API freshwater master test kit comes recommended. If ammonia and nitrite levels are above 0 then do a 20% water change. You may find you have to keep doing 20% changes every few days in the early stages until your bacteria stock has built up to cope with your current fish stocking levels. Once your levels have stablised you can then add another 4 - 5 fish but again you will have to do frequent water stat tests and changes until things stablise again.

Algal blooms are not uncommon in a new, cycling tank. Don't worry too much about it until you are fully stocked.

I personally would never add rocks or wood that I had found. Just because you can't guarantee that they havnt been polluted or contaminated with something. A £20 investment in an interesting piece of mopani wood from your LFS seems a much better option to me. However, if you do chose to keep it then your best bet is a really good scrub under a hot shower. Not boiling water as this tends to make wood disintegrate.

Good luck

 

[gizmo001i]

It might help if you can seed your filter from someone elses cycled filter. That way it might help your filter to get established.

 

[netcode]

Just a little update. I went into my LFS and bought a test kit. I tested both Ammonia and Nitrite. Ammonia was 0.00 which is good and nitrite was just over 0.00. From what I read in the information that comes with the test kit it said anything under 0.3 ml/l for nitrite is "safe". I will test again in a few days just to make sure everything is going as should.

Thanks for the help