First Testing....

[Strangerover]

I have had my tank set up for a couple of weeks now....

No fish yet... just plants...

So I went to Maidenhead aquatics to get some fish and test the water...

For the past week and a half or so I have added a pinch of fish food everyday in the morning....

Results from Maidenhead where....

PH... "ok" no info given was told it was fine....

Ammonia 0ppm
Nitrite 4ppm
Nitrate 20ppm

hmmm.. thats showing I have some kind of cycle going on...

I also added some live media this morning...

On my travels today I bought a API test kit.. and have just done tests myself...

Ammonia 0ppm
Nitrite 5ppm (but not quite that colour its a touch lighter)
Nitrate 1ppm
PH 8

What does this tell me ?

Well my take on it.. The guy at Maidenhead shook the bottles with his finger on the top.... the test explicitly says do not do that ! it can affect the result !

Anyway...

I have some kind of cycle going on...

I have added bacteria..

I'll keep adding a pinch of fish food first thing in the morning....

But... none of those figures are going to kill fish.... so I could put some in .... not just yet...

waiting to see the Nitrite drop...

At least now I can test my own water...

Is it worth lowering the PH for a community tank of Platties, Tetras and Corys? (shrimps at a later date)

In case your wondering why I'm not just adding ammonia...

I really do not plan on having loads of fish and am quite happy with 4-5 fish (thinking 4-5 Glowlight Dannio or 3 Platty) for the first month and then add slowly...

its a 311 litre tank

 

[waterdrop]

In my opinion it doesn't really matter whether 4 or 5 glowlights or 100 fish are going in there, its going to be easier to understand what's going on and to know you have robust colonies if you just use ammonia and do an add&wait fishless cycle.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[arobinson1984]

Your nitrite levels would kill fish if its reading 4/5ppm

Any level of nitrite is poisonous to fish so you sohuld wait for the cycle to finish and the nitrite levels to disappear before adding fish.

You will know when your cycle is completed because your tank will be able to process 5ppm of ammonia, into nitrIte, then into nitrAte all within 12 hours giving a reading of 0 for both ammonia and nitrite. You should then wait a week to make sure you dont get any spikes before adding fish (this is called the qualifying week)

I wouldn't personally recommend doing a fishless cycle using fish food, its not a very accurate way of measuring the ammonia levels that you are feeding your filter.

Andy