Introduction

[chesterscot]

to tff's theres been some really good advice as to what you need to do m8y i no you most probs want a tank full of colour as soon as but the fishless cycling is the best way to go it will stop you spending your hard earnt cash on sensitive fish that wont make it also b4 you buy fish check compatability with what stock you already have and their eventuall sizes it will save you loads of time and stress in the long run
well done for joining the forum it will be a great source of info for you and youll make loads of fish keeping friends
regards scoti

 

[poohbear1]

yeah i'm sorry to say but i agree with the above

woohooo I must be getting good Miss wiggle agreed with me.
I don't post much but read what you normally say and think you are great at giving advice that most people need.

 

[Jazzzz]

You read the information given agreed it was interesting ignored it and then complain your fish are dying. If you didn't add mature filter media or do a fish-less cycle then its your fault they are dying

when did you last do a water change

and 3 sharks and a plec they all grow to big return some of them

OK, I made a mistake I can gather that, I was way too keen to get the fish in. Will the aquatics store take them back?

common problem at least you acknowledge that now you can move in the right direction well done.

have you done a water change?

Do you know anyone who keeps fish who would give you some mature filter media

 

[Lord Fishheart]

You read the information given agreed it was interesting ignored it and then complain your fish are dying. If you didn't add mature filter media or do a fish-less cycle then its your fault they are dying

when did you last do a water change

and 3 sharks and a plec they all grow to big return some of them

OK, I made a mistake I can gather that, I was way too keen to get the fish in. Will the aquatics store take them back?

common problem at least you acknowledge that now you can move in the right direction well done.

have you done a water change?

Do you know anyone who keeps fish who would give you some mature filter media

No havent done a water change, I dont know anybody else who has fish either. So basically you advise me to return the fish and start again, which I should I have done from the start?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yeah i'm sorry to say but i agree with the above

woohooo I must be getting good Miss wiggle agreed with me.
I don't post much but read what you normally say and think you are great at giving advice that most people need.

OK Lord Fishheart, if you acknowledge your mistake and want to fix it that's your first step really.

Second step is to make a decision on the route to take to proceed, you've two chocies really

return all the fish to the store and do a fishless cycle - this isn't epxensive, you just need a test kit, a bottle of ammonia and some patience, it'll take a month or so but you shouldn't have any problems when you do add fish

try to wing it through a cycle with fish, you'll still need a test kit and you'll need a lot more patience, it's going to mean daily water changes for several weeks, that's a lot of hard work and can really grind you down, you also run the risk of loosing some or all of your fish.

 

[K-Holed]

Okay, so you made a mistake ... we all do. It's quite normal for someone to look at all the figures and long names of bacterias and go "erm ... how importent can they be?" You're human and you're not the first to do this and I'm damn sure you won't be the last.

Don't give up though. People have a tendency to make these things sound harder than they actually are. All you have to remember is (to a great extent) you aren't keeping fish, you are keeping water. The two things to remember are:

1)Chlorine burns fish and tap water contains chorline.

This is quick and easy to solve, we add a water conditioner to the water BEFORE adding it to the aquarium.

2)Fish don't like swimming around in their own doo-doo ... I mean who does?!

This is relatively easy to sort as well.

We get a filter.

Raw doo-doo (ammonia) gets pumped through the filter and after a time, little bacteria form in the filter that "eat" it. But as with anything that "eats" anything else, it has to release it's own doo-doo. In this case the Ammonia eating bacteria give out ...

nitrites

Sadly the fish aren't mad keep on swimming round in a tank full of this either. But it's ok! As the water gets pumped round again a new bunch of bacteria turn up, who's favourite "food" happens to be nitrites! Hoorah! Everything's going to be OK! ... almost. These bacteria get to work on the nitrite, but again, they have to release something themselves and in this case it's ...

nitrAtes.

Now fortunately most fish don't mind a few of these, so work done! ... almost ...

"What?! There's more?!"

Just a little bit. Over time as your fish produce more waste and it gets broken down, the amount of nitrate in your aquarium will start to rise. This is because there's no bacteria to break it down to the next level (such things do exist, but they're not easy to replicate in the average aquarium). Now I know I said that fish don't mind a few nitrates (and they don't) but even with nitrates there's a point where it just gets to be too much. So how are we going to get rid of these nitrates, well fortunately that's easy. We take a small amount of the water out of the auqarium every week or so (10-20%) ad replace it with fresh DECHLORINATED water (see step one). Also, if your so inclined, you can grow some plants in your aquarium. Plants love nitrates and will make use of them and just as before if they take in the nitrates they have to give something out, in this case free nitrogen. Free nitrogen is harmless and will escape the aquarium of it's own accord.

You also have to remember that this doesn't happen straight away. When you eat your dinner, it doesn't come out the other end straight away. You need to give the bacteria time to digest their meal. And the new bacteria for stage two, won't turn up until the first lot have finished their first cycle.

I'll just reiterate again, what you have done it not unusual and there's no point giving you a hard time about it. the importent thing now, is to begin to understand what has happened and WHY it has happened. None of it is rocket science. If it were, you wouldn't have so many sucessful fish keepers around the world.

Feel free to keep asking questions.

//James

 

[Lord Fishheart]

Thought I would keep you in the loop, with what is happening, all 25 of my fish have now died if only I took the advice I was given this would never have happened!

Anyway, I am now printing the fishless cycles from the bottom of Miss Wiggles signature and I am going ahead with this.

For all newbies, please please please stick by the advice given on this forum, saves you a hell of a lot of stress and money!!

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, when you are new to the hobby and have just bought all that nice solid equipment at the fish store, the people at the store seem somehow like the much more "real" thing to listen to. There is something about parting with your money that seems to form a bit of a trust relationship.

So many who are new but happen to come upon this forum still find it initially to be kind of weird, perhaps hard to trust initially. The members all have those weird names, like "Miss Wiggle" and poohbear and so forth. But the irony is, and I speak from experience, that this forum, TFF, is filled with tropical fish hobbyists who are just amazingly experienced at all this. They not only often have direct experience with setting up tanks and maintaining them, but many like Miss Wiggle have loads of experience guiding people correctly through the learning process. In my experience its usually just light years better than any advice from most fish stores.

One good way to think about the situation you currently find yourself in is to be open to the idea that the knowledge, the skills, you need to learn are truly fascinating and fun to learn.

Good Luck!,
~~waterdrop~~

 

[petertr]

Well hello there fishy friends, ive just bought a tank today, the wife treated me for my birthday and bought me a Aqua One 620 <a href="http/www.onlineaquariumstore.com/acatalo...0_Aquarium.html" target="_blank">http/www.onlineaquariumstore.com/acatalo...0_Aquarium.html</a> for £129.00. I am a complete novice where the subject of fish and tanks are concerned, so I have decided to join this forum.

Took me about 2 hours to set me tank up and it looks gorgeous, although I did have a mishap when my new puppy decided to pull the filter box off the draining board by the plug wire

Anyway, the guy in the shop told me that I have to prepare the tank and leave it a week for it to be all sorted before introducing it to the new fish.

This is where I need some help friends. What fish should I be buying?, what do you recommend? I would be grateful for any advice

Many thanks

Hello fello Mackem - best advise I can give, is to spend bloody hours reading the articles on here!

 

[K-Holed]

The one good thing about this forum is, although it would be quite easy for someone to tell you the completely wrong thing it very rarely happens. All these posts are open to the public and any advice given is seen by others and peer reviewed on an ongoing basis. You usually find that people would rather give no advice rather than bad advice, as their peers are watching and noone likes to look foolish. In a LFS, they are the only "expert", so what they say will go unchecked. I would't for a minute take anything you hear on this board as gospel, they're all still opinions. However as you browse more and more, you'll find opinions that are held by many and this should start telling you something. Look at these opinions, do some research, even disagree if you want.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Thought I would keep you in the loop, with what is happening, all 25 of my fish have now died if only I took the advice I was given this would never have happened!

Anyway, I am now printing the fishless cycles from the bottom of Miss Wiggles signature and I am going ahead with this.

For all newbies, please please please stick by the advice given on this forum, saves you a hell of a lot of stress and money!!

I'm so sorry that you've gone through this as your first experience of fishkeepeing, if it's any consolation to you my first tank was pretty similar, I was given advice from the pet store, it was crammed full with unsuitable fish and they died on me all the time. It's not a nice thing to have to live through, but you can come out of the side and become a good fishkeeper so don't panic unduly.

You've now learnt the two most important things in fishkeeping

1 - always do your own research

2 - don't trust the bloomin fish shop!

work your way through the pinned topics and the links in my sig, just read everything you can basically. It takes around 4-6 weeks to do a fishless cycle so plenty of time for research, give us a shout with any questions that you have and we'll be only too happy to help you out.

Yes, when you are new to the hobby and have just bought all that nice solid equipment at the fish store, the people at the store seem somehow like the much more "real" thing to listen to. There is something about parting with your money that seems to form a bit of a trust relationship.

So many who are new but happen to come upon this forum still find it initially to be kind of weird, perhaps hard to trust initially. The members all have those weird names, like "Miss Wiggle" and poohbear and so forth. But the irony is, and I speak from experience, that this forum, TFF, is filled with tropical fish hobbyists who are just amazingly experienced at all this. They not only often have direct experience with setting up tanks and maintaining them, but many like Miss Wiggle have loads of experience guiding people correctly through the learning process. In my experience its usually just light years better than any advice from most fish stores.

One good way to think about the situation you currently find yourself in is to be open to the idea that the knowledge, the skills, you need to learn are truly fascinating and fun to learn.

Good Luck!,
~~waterdrop~~

wise words WD, although I don't think my name's wierd.... Wiggle's just my surname

The one good thing about this forum is, although it would be quite easy for someone to tell you the completely wrong thing it very rarely happens. All these posts are open to the public and any advice given is seen by others and peer reviewed on an ongoing basis. You usually find that people would rather give no advice rather than bad advice, as their peers are watching and noone likes to look foolish. In a LFS, they are the only "expert", so what they say will go unchecked. I would't for a minute take anything you hear on this board as gospel, they're all still opinions. However as you browse more and more, you'll find opinions that are held by many and this should start telling you something. Look at these opinions, do some research, even disagree if you want.

yeah spot on as well, you will occasionally get someone post up some tripe which is very poor advice, generally 5 people will have posted back within a minute saying 'don't listen to them, they're wrong because .....' Yes sometimes you have to sift through some conflicting info and make your own mind up from it, but generally there's an obvious consensus. We're all human and no one forum member is guaranteed to get every piece of advice right, but between us we've probably got thousands of years fishkeeping experience and we'll have kept most of the fish commonly in the trade, sometimes it can take a while to find the person who knows the answer to your question..... but you can bet your bottom dollar that someone will know it!

 

[Lord Fishheart]

yeah i'm sorry to say but i agree with the above

woohooo I must be getting good Miss wiggle agreed with me.
I don't post much but read what you normally say and think you are great at giving advice that most people need.

OK Lord Fishheart, if you acknowledge your mistake and want to fix it that's your first step really.

Second step is to make a decision on the route to take to proceed, you've two chocies really

return all the fish to the store and do a fishless cycle - this isn't epxensive, you just need a test kit, a bottle of ammonia and some patience, it'll take a month or so but you shouldn't have any problems when you do add fish

try to wing it through a cycle with fish, you'll still need a test kit and you'll need a lot more patience, it's going to mean daily water changes for several weeks, that's a lot of hard work and can really grind you down, you also run the risk of loosing some or all of your fish.

Hi there, I am having problems with the return of my fish, basically the store will not take them back because they had white spot, I am in the process of treating them, what shall I do with them following treatment to run a fishless cycle?! Any help is appreciated

 

[Lord Fishheart]

yeah i'm sorry to say but i agree with the above

woohooo I must be getting good Miss wiggle agreed with me.
I don't post much but read what you normally say and think you are great at giving advice that most people need.

OK Lord Fishheart, if you acknowledge your mistake and want to fix it that's your first step really.

Second step is to make a decision on the route to take to proceed, you've two chocies really

return all the fish to the store and do a fishless cycle - this isn't epxensive, you just need a test kit, a bottle of ammonia and some patience, it'll take a month or so but you shouldn't have any problems when you do add fish

try to wing it through a cycle with fish, you'll still need a test kit and you'll need a lot more patience, it's going to mean daily water changes for several weeks, that's a lot of hard work and can really grind you down, you also run the risk of loosing some or all of your fish.

Hi there, I am having problems with the return of my fish, basically the store will not take them back because they had white spot, I am in the process of treating them, what shall I do with them following treatment to run a fishless cycle?! Any help is appreciated

Can I bump this?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

i thought you said you'd lost all the fish?

what fish do you have now, do they still have whitespot? what are you doing to treat it?

 

[Lord Fishheart]

i thought you said you'd lost all the fish?

what fish do you have now, do they still have whitespot? what are you doing to treat it?

Sorry, I have some remaining. I have 1 plec, 4 neon tetras, a rainbow shark and 1 golden tetra and 1 black molly. They don't look as if they have white spot, but saying that another one of my neon's died during the night so it could still be there. I am using protozin from the local aquatics shop i used it day 1,2,3 and the final treatment day is on day six (saturday), i started the treatment on Monday