First Clean & Fish Pics

[Sick Boy]

Hi all,

I read through the thread of Weekly maintanance and found it very usefill I ran the tank cyle for about a week then I got my fish last Thursay,

I can see there's poop and food in the gravel and the water is looking really mercy, I am going to do a gravel vac and water change tonight I am considering doing a 50% water change instead of the 25% to try get the water a lil clearer, do you htink this will be fine, all recomindations are welcome. I have a 30L Jebo R388 tanks. it has the built in filtration system

I will attach a few pics of my fish


[img=http/img357.imageshack.us/img357/822/albinobottomfeederva8.th.jpg]



[img=http/img384.imageshack.us/img384/1371/familypicfr3.th.jpg]

[img=http/img385.imageshack.us/img385/8201/mollyxw1.th.jpg]
[img=http/img511.imageshack.us/img511/6352/myfamily2gu5.th.jpg]
[img=http/img168.imageshack.us/img168/4346/sharkandtetasil8.th.jpg]
[img=http/img257.imageshack.us/img257/7296/neontetrasiq3.th.jpg]

 

[Schmill]

Looks like a nice tank with nice fish, but definitly do a 50% water change. You are now effectively doing a fish-in cycle I would think, so PLEASE ahve a look at THIS thread, and also if you don' have one buy yourself a decent liquid test kit. (The API Freshwater Master Test Kit is commonly used, and around £20 on e-bay or your LFS, but others are available too, just don't get the test 'strips' that you dunk in the water )

Good luck, welcome to the club, and looking good

 

[Sick Boy]

Hey Schmill thanks for the heads up I will give that thread a read

 

[Sick Boy]

Hi another question, how long must I leave the De-clorinator in the bucket water befor I addd it too the tank and are there any other chemicals or nutriants I would add, is there no kind of drops to make the water look clearer. thanks again

 

[Schmill]

Put water in bucket
Add dechlor & stir
Walk to tank
Tip bucket in

It really will work that fast! Many people on here with larger tanks actually use a hose to fill their tanks, and just put the dechlor product directly into the tank!

Chemicals & Nutrients
Not really, not for the fish anyway if all is well. If you have live plants in there then you can add some aquatic plant fertaliser once a week, but I wouldn't bother with that until you have completed the fish-in cycle as you are likely to be changing water so often at the moment the fertaliser would just be wasted.
As for drops to make the water clearer... generally water IS clear. If it's not clear in your tank then something else is going on, either a bacterial bloom (can be a good thing, especially when cycling), or dust from the substrate, or pollution in the water.
In your case none of these will really matter at the moment to be honest. You are going to be wanting to use teh liquid test kit to test your water at least once a day to check for Ammonia and NitrIte levels. If either is present then you will need to do a water change to get the levels to zero. The higher the levels, the more water that needs changing. I would probably only change 50% each time so as not to stress the fish too much, and if thats not enough to lower the levels, then do another 50% an hour or so later once the tank has warmed back up a bit

 

[Sick Boy]

WOW thanks again Schmill your advice I very helpfill I know my questions are a lil stupid but I am getting smarter with each answer so thanks again, I will keep you updated on how I progressed

 

[waterdrop]

I think Schmill has given you very good advice up there. I'll just mention some of the same things as sometimes it helps to hear it in different people's words:

Sounds like (from your threads) that you have a 30L/8G tank with about 13 fish in it, put in about a week after adding first water. The 13 fish sound smaller at this point so the tank, although technically overstocked, is probably not to overcrowded at this point. This stocking of fish, however, will probably produce a pretty high ammonia level pretty quickly for that tank.

I agree you look to be in a "fish-in" cycle and on average those take about 30 days, although there can be a pretty wide variation and some cycles of this sort can take quite a bit longer. The part about the test kit being a liquid-reagent based test kit is pretty important and the test kit will help you a lot in determining the best size and frequency of water changes during your fish-in cycle. Many of the members here us the API Freshwater Master Test Kit and like it, or there is the Nutrafin Mini-Master Test Kit, which is similar.

I would advise that you first practice on your tap water and post up the Ammonia, Nitrite(NO2), Nitrate(NO3) and pH results for your tap water here in your thread for the members to refer to. Next I would test the Ammonia, Nitrite(NO2) and pH of your tank water and post those up.

I advise you to test your Ammonia, Nitrite(NO2) and pH both morning and evening for a while and both post them up here and record them in a logbook near your tank. Your goal is to keep both Ammonia and Nitrite(NO2) below 0.25ppm at all times (closer to zero after you've changed water and up to a max of 0.25ppm by the time you are about to water change again.) The types of water changes Schmill has recommended should help accomplish this. The 50% change, optionally followed by another 50% change an hour later should be very effective. The high number of fish for that size tank may mean you have to change every day, but your tests will help you figure that out. The fact that you only need to change 3 or 4 gallons to get 50% will make the process easier than it would be on a bigger tank.

Not sure if this was mentioned but the one other thing I'd do is use the bucket of removed water, or a large cup of it, to roughly temperature-match the new conditioned tap water you are going to add to the tank. You can use your hand for this and that will be close enough, but with such a small tank, I think temperture matching would be a good safeguard, just like using conditioner.

Good Luck and welcome to the forums,
~~waterdrop~~