Great - I specifically asked the shop about no fish cycling and they said it wasn't safe for beginners because of the ammonia additions were complicated.
What do I need to do in the meantime to try and keep these poor fish alive then?
Hi Karmen and welcome to TFF!
Its particularly painful when we get a newcomer who has actually come -so- close to finding the right information, actually even asking about fishless cycling! This means that at least glimmers of this info are beginning to get around among the public perhaps. Its true, ever since about 1980, there's been this new way to avoid damage to the fish's gills and nervous systems and its not all that hard to learn about and do.
But lets first spend our energy on your fish! The LFS have put you in what we call a "Fish-In Cycling Situation." This doesn't necessarily make any sense until you read about the "Nitrogen Cycle" which is where the word "cycling" comes from. Our Beginners Resource Center has a write-up on this.
Background:
When fish move water through their gills to get oxygen, the process gives off both CO2 and ammonia. Fish also create waste in the tank and there will be excess fish food and possibly plant debris if you have live plants. These 3 types of organic waste will be broken down by heterotrophic bacteria that will have flourished in the water after it was dechlorinated and these bacteria will turn it into ammonia. Ammonia (NH3), even in small amounts, causes permanent gill damage to fish when it is not carried away, as it is by millions of gallons of fresh water in the wild.
When we buy a filter with a new aquarium, the filter is really just a kit, meant to be nurtured by a knowledgeable aquarist into a full-fledged system that serves as a mechanical filter, a biofilter and optionally a chemical filter. The biofilter part is the most unusual and it can take sometimes 2 months to make this part functional. The filter is only really ready for fish after this is functional. What we do is to -grow- two specific species of beneficial bacteria in the filter. These bacteria are autotrophs, different from the previously mentioned heterotrophs.
The first species will eat the ammonia in the aquarium and create nitrite(NO2), thus moving the Nitrogen (N) into a different form. Nitrite(NO2), even in small amounts, goes in at the gills, attaches to fish blood hemoglobin molecules as if it were O2 and then destroys the hemoglobin molecule, causing a suffocation effect as less oxygen makes it to other cells in the fishes body. The most immediate result is permanent nerve damage, especially in the brain. If it goes on for a bit, it causes permanent damage and then death. Ammonia damage to gills is similar, eventually causing death.
The second beneficial bacteria we grow eats this nitrite(NO2) and creates nitrate(NO3), thus again moving the (N) to a different form. Nitrate(NO3), while not a particularly good thing, is much less dangerous to fish. It can be removed from the tank with a weekly water change. The movement of N from NH3 to NO2 to NO3 is what makes up the Nitrogen cycle.
A mature biofilter, with two healthy colonies of autotrophic bacteria, is an awesome machine! It can keep a tank clear of the two deadly toxins, ammonia and nitrite(NO2) on an ongoing basis and it can clear the toxins so rapidly that our test kits can't even see the ammonia and nitrite that are being produced and then processed. The ammonia clearing bacteria are currently thought by science to be a Nitrosomonas type (we call them A-Bacs for short) and the nitrite(NO2) clearing bacteria are currently thought to be a Nitrospira type (we call them N-Bacs for short.)
Actions:
In Fish-In cycling you have to manually perform the "biofilter" function because your real biofilter is not working yet. The tool you use to do this is to water change. In order to fine-tune your water changing, you need to know the levels of ammonia and nitrite(NO2) to a fair level of accuracy, so you need a liquid-reagent-based test kit. Many of us like and use the API Freshwater Master Test Kit for this. There are other liquid test kits that will work ok too but paper strips are not good enough for this job. Hopefully you've already got a good test kit.
Your goal is to keep ammonia always below 0.25ppm and nitrite(NO2) always below 0.25ppm and you have to be a bit of a detective about the water changes. Most people test twice a day about 12 hours apart, usually placing those times at morning and evening when they can be home. A good starting point is to do a series of water changes to get the two toxins reading zero. You can do 50-70% changes as soon as one hour apart. Then 12 hours later when you test again, if something has gone over 0.25% you know you need a higher percentage change or more frequent changes. If you're not reaching 0.25% then you can get by with less.
Because your bacterial colonies are new and fragile, you need to use good water changing technique: always use a conditioner product (this takes out chlorine or chloramines) and it doesn't hurt to use it at 1.5x the recommended dose. Also use your hand to roughly temperature match the new water to that of your tank. Don't clean your filter during fish-in cycling, but if you ever have to because of clogging, be sure to only gently clean the media in tank water, not tap water.
Conclusion:
You'll know fish-in cycling is over when, after about a month on average, you find one day that both ammonia and nitrite(NO2) are zero but you didn't change any water. When you can go two days like this without changing water then fish-in cycling is over and you can just keep testing heavily for the next week to be sure.
Hope this helps you get started!
The contrast between the loose and inaccurate information from the LFS and the other extreme of us dedicated hobbyists can be jarring at times but its a relatively easy hobby and it doesn't take too long to become one of us hobbyists! All you have to do is like it enough to be interested!
~~waterdrop~~
