My New 95 Litre Tank

[LongS]

AAAAGGHGHHHHH!!!! the pet shop is useless. They keep giving me bad advice it seems. They told me to leave my new "Elite" 95 litre tank a week then add a few fish at a time. (they also told me i didn't need a test kit when i went to get one the other week).

I have just read through the fishless cycle thread, and to be honest it sounds complicated as i can't picture how to do it. How do i get hold of pure amonia? What is it?

I have a small 17 litre tank with one male guppy. He seems healthy and lively. The rest of the guppies i got at the time died due to some really bad advice.

I have kept this wee guy healthy and he seems happy so on friday i got my new tank. Was told to Treat it, leave it for 1 week then start adding fish gradually. I take it that this is "fish-in" cycling? or just plain bad advice?

its now nearly thursday, (treated the tank saturday) and i have just been told this won't help my tank in the slightest.

I don't fancy wasting anymore time, so in your opinion, what is my next step to get the ball rolling?

Add a few fish on saturday? or start a fishless cycle? or ....

Your help would be greatly appreciated. I am on the verge of slapping my own face in.

Longshlong

 

[OldMan47]

If you already have a fish in the tank, you can't really do a fishless cycle and it won't survive you adding any ammonia. Stop adding fish and lets try to get the one you have to survive instead. It can be done if you are willing to do the work. The basic way you do it is to monitor your ammonia and nitrite levels and any time that either one gets anywhere near 0.25 ppm, you do a large water change. The change will be at least 30% of the water. Over time you will find that you do not need to do the changes as often and then you will notice that you can never find any ammonia or nitrites. At that point your tank will be cycled enough for the fish you have. Once you have a cycled tank, you will be able to add one more fish the size of the one you have. Right after that you may see your water degrade a bit for a day or two but it should recover quickly. Give it another week and you could safely add the third fish. Again you may see some minor water quality problems that clear quickly. Eventually you will get to the point that you can safely add 2 or 3 fish at a time until you get up to a full stocking. This is a very abbreviated description of fish-in cycling. There is a link in my signature area to fish-in cycling that describes it more fully.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, you're in good hands with that advice from OM47. Completely agree.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Tropicoll]

Um, Shlong - from reading your post at least twice I believe you have two tanks? a 17 litre and a new 95 litre? The 17 litre has the guppy and the 95 litre has water but no fish?

If this is correct then I would highly recommend following OM47's advice on the 17 litre and fishless cycle the 95 litre.

Which country are you in?

In the UK you can get ammonia in Homebase and Boots. Homebase call it "household ammonia" in a white bottle with a blue lid. about 2 quid.

Make sure that it is unscented. Have a look at the ingredients. It should just list water and 9.5% ammonia and nothing else.

Apologies for butting in if I read this wrong, hope it helps.

Collin

 

[Schmill]

Must admit I'm tending with Colin on this one, I read as having 2 tanks, a smaller one with a single guppy inhabitant, and a larger one that is just water at the moment.

As for ammonia, yup, Homebase & Boots seem to be the best bet for it, although I have found it needs to be a largish Boots store, as it is kept with cleaning equipment and some of the smaller Boots stores only have the chemist & baby type things.

For your reference, to raise a 95 litre tank to 5ppm ammonia you will be looking to add 5ml of ammonia, so if you do go to Boots ask at the chemist desk for a couple of 5ml syringes, (they may charge you a couple of pence). I say a couple as then you can use one for measuring and adding your ammonia, and the other for extracting the tank water for your water tests.
Just make sure you mark the 2 syringes clearly, as it will likely skew your results somewhat if you used your 'ammonia' syringe to take tank water to test

 

[LongS]

yes that is correct i have two, 17 litre is the one with the guppy. The 95 litre is empty. (just water).

Sorry for the confusion guys.

ok thanks very much, i will start a fishless cycle as soon as i can get hold of the amonia!

Thanks for the quick replies and great advice! Much appreciated

Longshlong

 

[LauraFrog]

Hmm, I just thought I'd butt in here. I'm in Australia and I had huge difficulty obtaining ammonia to fishless cycle. Ammonia has several uses. It's a cleaning agent and it's often used for floor cleaning or sometimes softening laundry. It's also used for stuff like cleaning tough stains off walls. It's occasionally used as an animal deterrent (ie moths in wardrobes) but rarely as the smell is as offensive to humans as to animals. It is also unfortunately used in making certain illicit drugs.

If you ask staff where it's located apparently they will not tell people a lot of the time, something to do with its use with drugs. Also because the main application of ammonia is cleaning, they often add surfactants (soap etc) to the ammonia.

Usually you will find ammonia labelled as 'cloudy ammonia'. Ammonia in solution is faintly whitish looking, but it should be like a solid colour, if that makes sense. The cloudy ammonia you can get that looks iridescent or pearly, or like there's stuff swirling in the liquid, is not suitable for fishless cycling.

Unsuitable ammonia will foam up when shaken like a soap solution. Pure solution will form bubbles which will burst in a few seconds, it will not form a slick of foam on top.

There is an 'aquarium calculator' on this forum. It's located at the top of all pages, above the actual forum section. There's a link there to calculate the volume of ammonia required for fishless cycling. It will all depend on the strength of the solution you manage to find. A lot of people have 9.5% or even 11.5%. I've got 2%, so obviously I go through a bit. Never rely entirely on the calculator. Test your water to work out the ammonia concentration.

 

[Twist]

In the UK you can get Ammonia from your local Boots or Homebase. And possibley B & Q

 

[Schmill]

Calculator link is broken at the moment by the way, hence the reason I provided a guide amount above.

You have 2 choices, you can either use the calculator from the archive here:

Archive Calculator

Or you can work it out yourself from the following formula:

Ammonia_to_add_in_ml = ((target_ppm /10) x tank_volume_in_litres) / ammonia_strength_in_percent

So for instance, to get to a target of 5ppm, in a 95 litre tank, using 9.5% ammonia solution:

( (5 / 10) x 95) / 9.5 = 5ml

 

[alchemist]

Just for your information - the Stingray filter that comes with the Elite range of tanks uses a zeolite / carbon mix in two media cages. Zeolite sucks ammonia out of the water, until it gets saturated at which point it does nothing until you recharge it. So if you are fishless cycling you need to take the zeolite /carbon media packs out of the filter and just leave the foam in. Personally I think the carbon / zeolite packs are a big con to get you changing them every week.

This is also worth knowing in case you every need to use meds - you need to remove the carbon.

If you want to use the Zeolite media once the tank is established is up for debate

I read elsewhere on the forum that people have just stuffed more bacteria friendly media where these packs go in the filter. or just changed the filter for a different model.

 

[LongS]

Oh i wondered what that was, thanks very much for that i will remember to take it out when i get started. Probably won't use this to be honest now i know.

Tried asda yesterday but no luck with the amonia. Although the woman i asked about it kind of looked at me funny and was slightly disgusted for a second, so the drug thing might explain this! Didn't think i looked that dodgey though....

 

[Tropicoll]

It's amazing the funny looks you can get from shop assistants. I managed to do exactly the same with the staff at B&Q.

Seriously, if there's one near you try homebase, it's only about £1.99 a bottle. It's with the cleaning products.

Don't bother looking on their website though, it doesn't have it.

 

[toshapetriji]

Robert Dyas do ammonia too.

 

[LongS]

ok guys managed to get hold of a bottle of amonia. its called "amokleen" household amonia.

all it says on the bottle is Irritant and "amokleen contains ammonia solution 9.5%"

Then it lists some codes. im not sure if this is codes for other chemicals so i am just checking this would be suitable for the cycling?

Can anybody help?

Here are the numbers:

un2674 ec no 215-647-6 EC label.

i have no idea what these mean so im just checking...

 

[LongS]

has anybody actually used amo kleen then? need to be sure before i use it. Its smells so strong it knocked my head back when i smelled it.

I found out that the un2672 means ammonia hydroxide so i guess this is just water and ammonia and is safe to go ahead with the tank?

it also says on the safety sheet on the internet that it is extremely toxic to aquatic organisms.

Is this the whole point? put it in to defeat it?