My New Roma 125 Journal

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sadguppy

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I am starting this journal to document my new tank doing its fishless cycle. I got a digital camera last week, so I apologise if this is pic heavy - and all the pictures are rubbish! :blush:

To start, these are my current tanks:

Roma 200
This one has sand substrate (with a few stray pieces of red and grey gravel which was a terrible experiment!). Lots of bogwood, lots of plants.

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From the front in softer lighting (a few weeks ago)

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It's home to some platies, guppies, danios, dwarf gourami, cardinals, cories and a baby bristlenose.

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65l
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This one is cat litter substrate, with a wood 'cave' and plants. Take no notice of the floating plants - I think someone has been digging and it's too early in the morning to be sticking hands in tanks! This one is the first tank we bought and we are now using it as a 'room divider'. There is a background on the far end but you can see right through the long side and it doesn't seem to have changed the behaviour of the fish. It's home to a few lady guppies, a few lady platies, a shoal of 8 inquisitive pygmy cories and one grumpy and rather elusive clown plec:

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And this is the new tank, so far.

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It's a Roma 125 which came second hand with a 3d 'rock' background and rather than take it out, I decided to go with it and use it as a theme. I've added black sand (an idea pinches straight off of these forums!) and some decorative rocks (two hollow, two real) which we already had, but had taken out of the other tanks in favour of wood. There is also some wood and a hut which have been taken out of de-commissioned tanks. These are by no means permanent, they're just there because they have no where else to go!

There are a few plants in there which couldn't be squeezed in elsewhere but no where near as many as I am hoping to have eventually.

Tuesday (day 1)
We set it up, filled up with some old tank water and some dechlorinated water, turned on the filter (also second hand - seemed to be soggy but doesn't appear the bacteria have survived) and chucked in some fish food.

Wednesday (day 2)
Put in the sand and decor. I got some ammonia from homebase, and in the evening ammonia was measuring 0.5 so dosed up to 4/5ppm (5ml). Whacked the temp up to 31.5.

Thursday (day 3)
After doing a weekly water change on the Roma 200, I took some of the filter media our and swapped it in to the 125 however there are a few new additions in the larger tank and I didn't want to take too much and risk a spike. I will monitor both closely to see if i can take more next week. I also took the media out of an edge which we shut down, however there was only a single fish in there so I can't imagine that did much.

Friday (day 4)
8.30am - still no change - Ammonia at 4ppm, Nitrite 0 :sad: Doesn't look like the media did anything at all.

This journal is primarily for my own sanity however I would love to have your comments or suggestions on stocking, planting, decor or the cycling process!
 
Saturday (day 5)
Hurrah! Tested for ammonia this morning and it had gone down to 0.25 :good:
Re-dosed 5ml to get it back to 4ppm. Hopefully this is a sign that things are moving in the right direction... Will test again later to make sure. Strangely not a lot of nitrite, not quite 0 but not yet 0.25ppm - is it perhaps possible that more of the nitite-eating bacteria was transferred over in the filter media? Or is it just getting started... I will keep testing and see.

Stocking plans at the moment are a single Kribensis, a nice shoal tetras of some description (suggestions?), a pair of rams and a bottom dweller/dwellers to be decided...

Just as an aside I love my little bristlenose (Mr Bristles). He is so different to our clown plec, who is great to watch but hides away for most of the time. Bristles is out day or night sucking away at the glass or fighting off other much bigger fish for algae tablets - and he's only an inch or so long! Here he is admiring his reflection on his first day in the tank!

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Sounds good so far. I have a Roma 125 in my living room and it's a lovely tank, I got the stand with it too though. I want more tanks though, wayy more! :hyper:
 
Just done another test and the ammonia is already down to 1ppm. I will leave it overnight and re-dose tomorrow if it goes below 0.5. :hyper: There are some nitrites, although they are below 0.25, so perhaps some of the bacteria did survive after all! Nitrates have gone up to 10-20ppm so obviously the bacteria are working hard.
 
9.30pm
Did another test (I was bored!) and it appears that ammonia is now at 0.5ppm! That's from 4ppm to 0.5 in 12 hours. I won't re-dose but leave it for tonight and check in the morning. Still no substantial nitrite (<0.25).

Here are the ammonia tests from last night, this morning, earlier this evening and just now, and two nitrite tests:

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And here are the most recent tests with the test strips (you can tell I have only just bought a digital camera can't you!):

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Fingers crossed for tomorrow morning! :hyper:
 
Tehee, almost too much excitement ;)
 
So at 10am I re-tested and the results of the API test looked like this:

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Hurrah! This is definitely going in the right direction. In actual fact the Ammonia result looked more like 0.25 to me than 0 - but that's still around 4ppm ammonia converted to nitrate in under a day. The filter media from my other tank, even though it was just a small bit, clearly worked, - or maybe there was some bacteria left in the old filter. Having the temperature so high has clearly sped things along too. You couldn't do that in a fish-in cycle now could you!

Still no nitrites - which is odd but I am not complaining!

Re-dosed 6ml of the stinky ammonia. Now we're back up to 4ppm:

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Two days ago, I found a zebra danio stuck behind the filter in my Roma 200. I have no idea how he got there but he was completely vertical and properly wedged in. I freed him and he swam off, but stuck to the same spot. He looked pretty beaten up and very unhappy so yesterday I decided to move him to the hospital tank so he could recuperate with a bit of TLC. This hospital tank, a small 20l Arcadia Arc, had been housing some guppy fry so I decided they were big enough and ugly enough to look after themselves in the big wide world of the 65l tank... Here they are swimming around around in their new home this morning, wondering where their food is no doubt!

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Here they are with who I'm assuming is mum swimming around in the foreground.

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At the moment they all look like girls however I am sure that they can't be; I will have to keep a very careful watch on them and see if any of them develop gonopodiums or we could have a population explosion. Maybe an expert would be able to tell by now but these are my first lot of fry and I am not an expert on sexing very young guppies... but I probably need to become an expert quickly because I don't want too many more!
 
Lovely tank! As far as a shoal of tetras I really like the silver tipped tetras or celestial pearl danios. :)

Thank you :) I have been looking into it a bit today and I really like the look of five0banded barbs but I am always subject to change my mind before this darn thing has cycled!


Another update...
Well it has been a miserable Sunday, and rather than go out and do anything worthwhile I've spent a lot of it just relaxing and watching my fish. Not a bad way to spend the day really!

So because I bet you're dying to know, I have been testing my water throughout the day and I can reveal the results:

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L-R - 10.30am immediately after re-dose to 4ppm, 4.5 hours later at 3pm (around 3ppm), 8.5 hours after re-dosing at 7pm at 2ppm and then finally at 9pm, 10.5 hours after the re-dose at 1ppm.

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You can see for yourself! Isn't it pretty.
Nitrite is about 0.25 and has remained there all day. Nitrate is about 10-20ppm, it's difficult to tell in this light.

I have added another 3/4ml of my favourite household ammonia which should bring it back up to the 4ppm level, as I am not sure I will be able to tomorrow morning.

Well, I am sure you will agree that's quite enough excitement for one day!
 
So 7.45am the results looked like this...

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0.25 Ammonia
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0.25 Nitrite

So I re-dosed 6ml of ammonia and 12 hours later at 7.45pm I have:

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That's absolutely no ammonia, and just trace nitrites (<0.25). Hooray! :hyper:

Time to re-dose and hopefully over the week I'll see nitrites at a big sky blue 0 after 12 hours. Then with any luck I will be ready for fishies this weekend or the next. The great thing about cycling this way (with no fish) is that you can add them all at once and it won't overload the filter because a tank full of fish won't produce 4ppm ammonia, so the filter will be able to cope.

Now I just have to decide which fish I want!
 
The exciting part, deciding on stocking! :hyper:

Any ideas yet?
 
So... Get ready for this people. It's a rollercoaster :lol:

Tuesday & Wednesday (Days 8 & 9)

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Tuesday, 7.45am (12hrs after re-dosing) - 0 ppm Ammonia and 0.5ppm Nitrite

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Tuesday, 6.15pm, 10hrs 30 mins after re-dosing Ammonia. Ammonia 0, Nitrite between 0 and 0.25 and Nitrate around 5.

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Tuesday 1t 10.15pm, four hours after re-dosing. 1.5ppm Ammonia , 1ppm Nitrite

And today's results.... *DRUMROLL PLEASE*

Firstly, a thought for the poorly zebra danio which got stuck behind the filter, who has now gone to fishy heaven. RIP little buddy. He was one of only two men against six lady danios, probably stuck himself to the filter in sheer exasperation. There is only so much procreating you can attempt.

But on a lighter note..

At 7.50am, the results were much like yesterday...

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L - 0 Ammonia and 0 Nitrite results from a fully cycled tank for comparison
R Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate tests from this tank. Nitrite between 0 and 0.25 again...
So I re-dosed...and this evening...

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Ta-da! Double 0s!

Now I have re-dosed and I'll keep doing so for the next few days to make sure it's not a fluke... Fingers crossed! Now I have to put some real thought to stocking :S

My thoughts at the moment:

A pair of kribs, or maybe just my one krib on her own (I am not sure how she will take to a boyfriend)! Some five banded barbs, or tiger barbs... Unsure about that one. Er... and that's as far as I have got :lol:
 
Thought I would take a few pictures of my fish to share...

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Boffer the powder blue dwarf gourami looking quizzical. I don't think he's particularly intelligent, even for a fish.

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Action shot! You can see the zebra danios whizzing around in the background. The all seem to be gravid at the moment. Oh, and boff pigging out as usual.

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Boffer chasing his girlfriend. Sometimes she quite likes him, other times like today she plays hard to get!
 
Looking good! :good:

How many tanks do you have in total?
 

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