My First Tank

[sean0151]

Hi Folks
First fish tank and first post here.Ill try and keep as brief as possible but give you all the facts before my questions.
I notice you all seem to recommend a fishless cycle to get things going,unfortunatley this isnt the way ive gone.This was due due to ignorance rather than an informed decision and hope you wont hold it against me.
We bought our tank about four weeks ago its a interpet fish pod 120l.Set up as instructions.We have 5 living plants in there.Plenty of hidey holes and various size plastic plants
We filled with water treated with tap safe started heater and filter and treated with interpet filter start as per instructions.
At day 5 we tested water for PH, Nitrite and ammonia and all seemed fine so we went out and bought 6 Guppies and put them in.We continued to check water daily and saw no increase in ammonia or nitrite and another week in we saw the start of nitrate readings although very slight.
We then put in 3 platys after a 20% water change and filter wash (in removed aquarium water).
We are now on day 25 and are still water testing.Still no ammonia or nitrite and nitrate reading up to 20ppm.
Today we lost one of our platys.
All the fish have been lively and feeding well with no signs of nipping or bullying.Feeding a small pinch of flake once a day.

Any ideas on the death of the platy,is this to do with the way we have started off?
How far into the cycle do you estimate we are given these water readings?
Is there anything i could be doing given the way i have started my tank cycle?
Should we be mixing the diet,if so what with?
Any thoughts or recomendations greatly appreciated as this is more involved than i thought it would be but i am looking forward to the challenge.
Regards
Sean

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Sean.
I am going to venture a guess that you are using test strips to test your water. The amount of water that you are changing is not nearly enough for a fish-in cycle. Unless someone has misled you about the chemical needs of the fish, three must be something wrong with the test results. The most common reason for a bad chemical test is a poor testing method, which is often the result of trying to use test strips.
When doing a fish-in cycle, which can be done quite successfully, we strive to keep our ammonia and nitrite levels both as low as practical and never let either one get above 0.25 ppm (mg/l) right before a water change. That often means a large percentage water change daily. With your relatively light fish stock levels, you might get away with a water change every 2 or 3 days, but no way would get away with a single water change of a small amount in 25 days.
When you first tested your water, it was probably fine, since there was no fish or anything else in the tank to add contaminants. Once you placed fish in the tank you suddenly had 3 sources of ammonia in the tank. First was the fish themselves who exchange a bit of ammonia along with some CO2 when they pass water through their gills. The second source is of course rotting fish wastes on the bottom of the tank, or even in the filter. The third source is any decaying food from the overfeeding that nearly all new fish owners end up doing.
Now that you have ammonia being produced, vigorously growing plants will give you some help controlling the nitrogen compounds, but 5 plants will not be enough for your stock levels. If you had a heavy planting, like this one, you could get away with not caring at all about filters. The plants would take care of things.

With your light stock levels you might even get away with fewer plants like this.

Ultimately your water changes remove any surplus of nitrogen in the form of NH3, NO2 or NO3. The NH3 and NO2 are deadly poisons in trace amounts while the NO3 can be tolerated at much higher levels. A mature filter will convert all ammonia or nitrite to nitrates, which is why we work so hard to establish a healthy filter.
The real advice here is to get a decent liquid type water testing kit, test at least daily for a while and do a big enough water change that by the time you test the next day the levels will still be less than 0.25 ppm of both ammonia and nitrites. I have a link in my signature area to a n article on fish-in cycling if you want to read in more detail.

 

[sean0151]

Welcome to the forum Sean.
I am going to venture a guess that you are using test strips to test your water. The amount of water that you are changing is not nearly enough for a fish-in cycle. Unless someone has misled you about the chemical needs of the fish, three must be something wrong with the test results. The most common reason for a bad chemical test is a poor testing method, which is often the result of trying to use test strips.
When doing a fish-in cycle, which can be done quite successfully, we strive to keep our ammonia and nitrite levels both as low as practical and never let either one get above 0.25 ppm (mg/l) right before a water change. That often means a large percentage water change daily. With your relatively light fish stock levels, you might get away with a water change every 2 or 3 days, but no way would get away with a single water change of a small amount in 25 days.
When you first tested your water, it was probably fine, since there was no fish or anything else in the tank to add contaminants. Once you placed fish in the tank you suddenly had 3 sources of ammonia in the tank. First was the fish themselves who exchange a bit of ammonia along with some CO2 when they pass water through their gills. The second source is of course rotting fish wastes on the bottom of the tank, or even in the filter. The third source is any decaying food from the overfeeding that nearly all new fish owners end up doing.
Now that you have ammonia being produced, vigorously growing plants will give you some help controlling the nitrogen compounds, but 5 plants will not be enough for your stock levels. If you had a heavy planting, like this one, you could get away with not caring at all about filters. The plants would take care of things.

With your light stock levels you might even get away with fewer plants like this.

Ultimately your water changes remove any surplus of nitrogen in the form of NH3, NO2 or NO3. The NH3 and NO2 are deadly poisons in trace amounts while the NO3 can be tolerated at much higher levels. A mature filter will convert all ammonia or nitrite to nitrates, which is why we work so hard to establish a healthy filter.
The real advice here is to get a decent liquid type water testing kit, test at least daily for a while and do a big enough water change that by the time you test the next day the levels will still be less than 0.25 ppm of both ammonia and nitrites. I have a link in my signature area to a n article on fish-in cycling if you want to read in more detail.

 

[sean0151]

Hi Old Man 47
Thanks for prompt reply.
My test kit is not strips its a API freshwater master test kit.
The testing has been done on a daily or sometimes bi daily basis and been confirmed when my wife took a water sample to our local LFS in a panic cos we had snails.They tested the water and confirmed our readings.
The only things i can think that i left out of my original post was a PH value of 7 our filter is an interpet pf3 and temp constant 24.
I have been very surprised from my reading of this forum and other web sites that we have seen no ammonia or nitrite spikes.
You said in your post you thought my fish stocks were light.I thought maybe i had overdone it.If they are light could it be that the spikes are yet to come and i am very early on in the cycle?

 

[waterdrop]

It sounds like you put your fish in 3 weeks ago, a week after the tank had been set up. If so then you may be right that you are just not seeing many signs of the cycle yet. Its occasionally possible to cycle a tank in 3 weeks but its very uncommon. More common is the fish-in cycle that seems to not give much feedback in the way of test results. You just have to be patient with it and keep testing.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[sean0151]

Hi.
So if my cycle hasnt really started yet should i still be doing water changes or do i wait till i see signs of ammonia and nitrite.The level of nitrate has been constant for about a week could this have been produced by the filter start we were using?
Ive got a feeling that the smug grins we had from a relaxed start up to our tank is soon to wiped from our faces.

 

[waterdrop]

No, you don't need to be doing water changes because water changes should be based on keeping the toxins below 0.25ppm but in such a way that you do it only if its needed. WD

 

[OldMan47]

As long as you are sampling daily, you only need to do a water change when you see signs of ammonia or nitrites showing up. Otherwise a routine weekly change of 20 to 30% would be fine as a routine maintenance change. A "silent cycle", where you never see anything but a bit of nitrates, is possible but not very common without heavy plantings.