I purchased some testing kit from a different fish store and was told to add nothing to the water just wait a week and test the water it should be ok then?! I mentioned cycling and was told not to worry about doing this as it's only a little tank and will sort its self out unaided!!
Ah, you misheard them
they actually said "Give us some money, when the fish die, come back and give us more money! That way, you keep us in a job, and we can probably sell you expensive and useless products to solve your "problems"!".
Seriously? It is a LOT more dangerous to do that in a small aquarium than a large one because the concentrations are higher, if there is less water.
I am now evenmore confused my test result were ammonia 0.25 nitrites 0 nitrates 20 is this good? What should I do now?? This is becoming a stressful and confusing experience!
Ok, don't stress hun. You've got no animals right now, so you can't hurt anything yet. We'll take you through it step by step, if you like. First, I'll explain your readings:
* Ammonia is *sometimes* present in water supplies. If your tap water is reading 0 ppm ammonia and your tank water is reading 0.25 ppm ammonia, after you added dechlorinator, it means that your tap water contains chloramine. I have exactly the same situation, see http
/aquariumadventure.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/first-water-tests-and-ammonia-dosing/
* Nitrite reading means you have no tap nitrite and no bacteria in your filter.
* It is normal for tap nitrate to be that high, nothing to worry about here.
Your next step should be to decide if you want to do a fish-in cycle (which is what your shop is telling you to do) or a fish-less cycle (which is what we're telling you to do). One thing to consider at this point is that you will be giving your money to the shop, on the other hand, I will never see any of it and will probably never find out who you actually are.. and to be honest, there is a lot more fun stuff I could be doing right now. So why am I here? Because it makes me feel good if another person has a good experience and one less fish dies. I am very biased towards fish-less, but here is what I wrote about it: http
/aquariumadventure.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/fish-less-cycling/
0.25 ppm is an arbitrary value we chose for simplicity. Depending on the set-up, ammonia and nitrite can be less or more harmful at those values.
* Fish-in: you get fish in the aquarium immediately, but need to do daily water changes for 4-12 weeks to keep ammonia and nitrite always below 0.25 ppm. If you do not, the fish may be harmed permanently and/or die.
* Fish-less: you start off with an empty tank for 4-8 weeks, but no animals are harmed in the process. From my point of view, less stressful than running around with buckets of water and wondering if your fish are being poisoned while you're out doing shopping.
For me, the choice is really easy and personally, I would prefer if your daughter learnt patience and care for her animals early on, as I am sure she will keep other pets when she is older.
