Hi everyone i've just joined up the forum to try and get some help and guidance, my partner and i bought a fish tank at the weekend from pets at home, Its a Fluval 90Litre roma tank with a fluval filter with the polyester and carbon filter pad in it & heater, we were advised to wait 7 days before buying the fish and to set the tank up with all the plants & ornaments (Were hoping to buy tropical fish) we came home, put the gravel and plants in and filled the tank with water, we also added 2 capfuls each of Nutrafin Aqua plus water conditioner and Nutrafin aquarium supplement cycle. the tank is now at 27-28 degrees (as advised by the store) and has been set up since wednesday afternoon... Now the water has turned a white cloudy colour and im not sure why?? (is this to do with the bacterial bloom?) Any advise would be greatly appreciated!!! and apologies for a long post! oh and am i right to put the polyester and carbon pads in the filter???
Help! New To This And Completley Confused?
- Thread starter BeckyD
- Start date
Corleone
Fish Herder
It could be a bacterial bloom, depends on what color it is. Bacterial blooms are white. They're harmless, themselves, but usually a sign of bad things happening (at least in terms of having fish in there), like ammonia. Depending on where you live, there could be ammonia in the tap water, or chloramine which often leaves ammonia behind when you use water conditioner. Since there's no fish, it's safe to wait the bloom out. Green water is algae, which can be caused by excess sunlight, among other things. Brown clouding can be tannins from new bogwood. It's also harmless, and will go away over time.
The water conditioner is fine, but Cycle is junk. There's a handful of brands that can potentially work, but most of them still don't work nearly as well as advertised, and even the best aren't always reliable.
You're right with the filter media. Generally speaking, carbon isn't required, but it won't hurt. It will be depleted within a few days, however, not the month the filter documentation probably says. The polyester is probably the biological media, which will eventually be home to a large colony of bacteria which will nitrogenous waste products in the water.
Leaving the tank run for any amount of time, however, accomplishes nothing. Going on shop advice, you're no more likely to escape the terrors of New Tank Syndrome bringing fish home with the tank than you are leaving it run even a month. You'll want to cycle the tank, which requires a source of ammonia. Please review this thread, since you're fortunate to have found this site before you got your fish. It will take some time, 3-5 weeks is typical, but it's far less work than trying to keep fish alive through the cycle, which will require large daily (sometimes twice daily) water changes and potentially take longer.
http
/www.fishforums.net/content/New-to-t...shless-Cycling/
Edit: Last edit broke the link formatting
The water conditioner is fine, but Cycle is junk. There's a handful of brands that can potentially work, but most of them still don't work nearly as well as advertised, and even the best aren't always reliable.
You're right with the filter media. Generally speaking, carbon isn't required, but it won't hurt. It will be depleted within a few days, however, not the month the filter documentation probably says. The polyester is probably the biological media, which will eventually be home to a large colony of bacteria which will nitrogenous waste products in the water.
Leaving the tank run for any amount of time, however, accomplishes nothing. Going on shop advice, you're no more likely to escape the terrors of New Tank Syndrome bringing fish home with the tank than you are leaving it run even a month. You'll want to cycle the tank, which requires a source of ammonia. Please review this thread, since you're fortunate to have found this site before you got your fish. It will take some time, 3-5 weeks is typical, but it's far less work than trying to keep fish alive through the cycle, which will require large daily (sometimes twice daily) water changes and potentially take longer.
http
/www.fishforums.net/content/New-to-t...shless-Cycling/Edit: Last edit broke the link formatting
It could be a bacterial bloom, depends on what color it is. Bacterial blooms are white. They're harmless, themselves, but usually a sign of bad things happening (at least in terms of having fish in there), like ammonia. Depending on where you live, there could be ammonia in the tap water, or chloramine which often leaves ammonia behind when you use water conditioner. Since there's no fish, it's safe to wait the bloom out. Green water is algae, which can be caused by excess sunlight, among other things. Brown clouding can be tannins from new bogwood. It's also harmless, and will go away over time.
The water conditioner is fine, but Cycle is junk. There's a handful of brands that can potentially work, but most of them still don't work nearly as well as advertised, and even the best aren't always reliable.
You're right with the filter media. Generally speaking, carbon isn't required, but it won't hurt. It will be depleted within a few days, however, not the month the filter documentation probably says. The polyester is probably the biological media, which will eventually be home to a large colony of bacteria which will nitrogenous waste products in the water.
Leaving the tank run for any amount of time, however, accomplishes nothing. Going on shop advice, you're no more likely to escape the terrors of New Tank Syndrome bringing fish home with the tank than you are leaving it run even a month. You'll want to cycle the tank, which requires a source of ammonia. Please review this thread, since you're fortunate to have found this site before you got your fish. It will take some time, 3-5 weeks is typical, but it's far less work than trying to keep fish alive through the cycle, which will require large daily (sometimes twice daily) water changes and potentially take longer.
[URL="http
Edit: Last edit broke the link formatting
Thank you for the detailed reply! i read the link and its quite helpful, going on what it says i should get an ammonia tester? would i be able to buy this at the pet shop and how do i know when the ammonia levels are right?
also when i do start to introduce fish should i add the water they came from the pet shop into the tank? as it says i will add fish gradually (possibly starting with a few guppies?)
going by your description of the water colour in the tank its a bacterial bloom.. is there anything else i can add to the water to prepare it & make it safe for when i add the fish? im really worried that i'll start to add fish and end up killing them because of something i've done or havnt done!
Corleone
Fish Herder
Taking your questions in order: You should get a full test kit. Most liquid drop tests (far more reliable and, while they cost more than strips, you'll get several times as many tests out of a bottle) come in kits like the API Freshwater Master kit, which is one of the more popular. The kit will come with tubes marked for a specific volume of water and detailed instructions. Usually you just add a set number of drops from one or two bottles and wait five minutes, but API's nitrate test has a bunch of annoying steps that you'll have to follow, or you'll get a low reading.
I avoid adding the water the fish came with. I float the bags for a while, add tank water, and then pour the water through a net into a bucket and drop the fish into the tank. You never know what you're getting with LFS water, from medicines to diseases. Ideally you'd quarantine the fish anyway, but that's not always an option when starting out.
The only thing you have to do to make the tank safe is cycle it, chemical additives are almost always best avoided. At the end of a fishless cycle, you'll want to change all the water in the tank, and it sometimes takes one or two similar water changes around the mid point of a fishless cycle. Once you're done with it, though, you don't need to worry about gradual stocking, you can usually put a good chunk of your planned stock in straight away, avoiding sensitive fish like neon tetras or gouramis. Gradual stocking is used for cycling with fish, which is a very stressful for you and often leaves fish with permanent damage.
To compare fishless cycling to cycling with fish, you can review this thread, which should give you an idea of how much water changing it will take. That route, you'll also want a test kit - it's really the most important thing you'll get for the tank after the filter, as detailed water stats will diagnose a great many problems, and point many others to their root cause.
[URL="http
/www.fishforums.net/content/New-to-t...eady-have-fish/"]http/www.fishforums.net/content/New-to-t...eady-have-fish/[/URL]
Becky D, welcome to the forum. If you follow the fishless cycling information and just change water while using a dechlorinator whenever your readings get off the top of the readable scale for each chemical, it will be fine. Feel free to come back and ask questions but expect people to want to know what your latest set of test readings showed. Around here we are driven by the actual chemistry results and we do understand from them where your cycle is. What it means is we can give you advice on exactly what you should do next at every step of the way. Relax and get your ammonia and test equipment and we will walk you right through the process. Believe me that after reading a few hundred postings by people with cycle troubles, the answers are almost automatic based on the numbers. Although every cycle is unique, the principles always work out and we can get you through it.
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