Help Planning And Cycling My New Tank...roma 125

Well today I added another five bunches of plants, rearranged the rocks a bit and put the bogwood in. I steered clear of variagated plants and got some more vallis and grass and a dark leafed one for the front. I changed about 25% of the water. I bought some Plant Gro fertiliser and added as instructed, anyone else use it? Is it any good? Made by Hagen btw.
Then I transfered two platies from my daughters tank, took a small squeeze from one of her sponge filters and added some of her tank water to get the cycle going.

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A few hours later and my readings are...

ph 6.6
ammonia 0.25 ppm
nitrite 0 ppm
nitrate 0 ppm

I cant believe how red the platies look in this tank, the lighting is great! :)
Oh, and will the platies eat the plants??
 
Thanks for the advice guys, they have now been removed. It looks much better with them out, wasn't too keen on them anyway, that will teach me to impulse buy!
I also took a pair of scissors to all the plants with brown or broken leaves. I know less than nothing about plant care, dont even have one in my flat! Is that the best thing to do? Just cut them where they are brown or broken?
As well as testing the tank water, I also tested my tap water, which had been left to sit for 24 hours.

Heres the tap water results...

ph 6.6
ammonia 0.25 ppm
nitrite 0 ppm
nitrate 0 ppm

...and day 2 for the tank....

ph 6.6
ammonia 0.25 ppm
nitrite 0 ppm
nitrate 0 ppm

At least the ph is stable so far with the stones I added.
 
You have 0.25 ammonia in your tap water?! that shouldn't be happening :crazy:

Its best to removing dying leaves yeah because they'll give you ammonia...
 
You have 0.25 ammonia in your tap water?! that shouldn't be happening :crazy:
Yeah I tested the tap water in my area a couple of weeks ago and got the same results. On another forum, it was suggested it could be a colour bleed, as other fish keepers who have had tanks running 2 plus years also get that result with the API kit for ammonia :unsure:
 
you can get ammonia in tap water, ive tried api, jbl and evolution aqua tested our tap water using an electronic device and yes there was ammonia in the water 0,2 to be precise.and we drink that yuk

i think u have an anubia at the front of your tank . you could tie that onto your bogwood using fishing line
 
I'd put a complaint into the water authority about that, surely 0.25ppm Ammonia in water isn't healthy? I bet it's within their safety margins or something....
 
i think u have an anubia at the front of your tank . you could tie that onto your bogwood using fishing line
Good times! Is that the dark leafed one right in front of the wood?

surely 0.25ppm Ammonia in water isn't healthy?
Probably not, I have wondered before about the chemicals they add to our water anyway, to make it "safe".

Day 3

ph 6.6
ammonia 0.25 ppm
nitrite 0 ppm

I think I have a very small snail on the bogwood, any good sites to id him? I take it snails are usually bad, will they eat the plants?
 
The 0.25 ppm of ammonia is not high at all. I have tap water that always runs above 0.5 ppm ammonia. The reason is very simple. These days many water authorities are using chloramine in the water instead of chlorine. It lasts much longer in the pipes and does a better job of controlling bacteria that might otherwise make the water unsafe to drink. Why should that matter? Chloramine is basically a chlorine and ammonia compound. When your dechlorinator breaks the chemical bonds of chloramine, it neutralizes the chlorine and makes the ammonia component safer for the fish than simple ammonia would be. When I measure over 0.5 ppm of ammonia, I am aware that the chlorine in my water is not simply chlorine but is instead chloramine. It does make things a bit difficult if I decide to do a fish*-in cycle because the new tap water always contains too much ammonia to truly be safe for the fish. In a mature tank it is meaningless because my filter gets rid of every trace of ammonia inside of a couple of hours.
 
Thanks for the explanation OM47, it should have clicked about the Chloramine...:)
I think I have a very small snail on the bogwood, any good sites to id him? I take it snails are usually bad, will they eat the plants?

Snails get a bad rep, for the most part they're fine and as long as they don't overrun your tank I see no problem with them. If they do overrun your tank they are probably telling you there is something wrong, i.e. you could be most likely over feeding the fish, leaving plenty of nutritional goodness for them to multiple easily with. I'd say leave them in, and if numbers get out of hand take them out when ever you see them...I wouldn't opt for the snail killing chemicals...you'll only be left with a lot of dead snails rotting away and producing excess ammonia anyway.

Robyns snail page has worked for me in the past: http://www.fishpondinfo.com/snail2.htm I'm sure there are more sites out there too, google is your friend

 
Thanks oldman47, would you recommend I leave waterchanges until the tank hits 0.50 ppm ammonia? So far I have waited until its over 0.25 ppm before water changing. Tonight for example was between 0.25 and 0.50 ppm, so I changed 50% of the water.

Checked that site and had a look on here too, kaivalagi. It was very small, so first guess would be a trumpet snail, but time will tell! Can't see it at all tonight.

Day 4

ph 6.6
ammonia 0.25 to 0.50 ppm
nitrite 0 ppm
 
Doing a fish-in cycle I'd be doing daily water changes until I saw zero ammonia and zero nitrates before doing the next scheduled water change...even if your tap water has 0.25 ammonia it should be zero by the next day due to the bacteria working...0.25 is not good for your fish
 
Ok, lets say, for example, tomorrow night the tank reads 0.25 ppm ammonia, I should do a water change and add water with 0.25 ppm ammonia even tho the tank isn't capable of processing it yet? Does that not sound pointless?
Obviously, anything above that warrants a change...;)
 
Fair point...anything found above your tap water level should warrant a water change for now, although I still think you are best off doing daily water changes all the way through the fish-in process until you have a bacteria colony setup. Saves you doing tests every single day...Give it a few days and you'll start seeing the ammonia coming up higher for a while before bacteria build up anyway...
 

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