New To Hobby And Setting Up New Tank, All Help Appreciated!

[chuckieboy]

Hi All,

Set up my new aquarium which is a Fluval Vicenza 180 bow front with external 205 filter, L 92cm, W 41 and H 55, and it holds 180 ltrs

Also have 2 air stones and quite good circulation along with about 6 plants that are all doing very well (so far so good)

I also have an internal Fluval 3 Plus filter in my old tank, i still have about 6 guppies, 1 sword, 2 angles and 2 neons in this tank but could i put this filter into my new tank just for a short time along with the fore mentioned fish to help the process along or is that another bad idea?

Set the tank up Sunday 9th March, added the filter cycle aid stuff (please excuse me) then about 4 days later added 5 danios, then a further 3 days added 4 swords and 2 corys, one danio died the next night, no signs of ill health untill it was found floating

Sunday 16th March added more filter cycle aid and then my large plec as was starting to get alot of algae, done regular water checks using API Masters Test Kit and all seems ok but my latest readings are listed below, can anyone tell me if they are good or bad and what i need to be doing next and when i can add some more fishes.

PH 7.0
Amonia 2.0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 5.0 (this was at 0 only 3 days ago when last checked)

Is this good or bad, please help as do not want dead fishes.



Thanks Kevin

 

[waterdrop]

Hi Kevin,

Sounds like you are not cycled yet. 2.0 parts per million of ammonia will continue to kill fish pretty rapidly. You are in a "fish-in" cycle as we call it. You will need to start doing 50% water changes.

You siphon out half the tank water. Look on your dechlor product (such as Prime or Stress Coat) and calc the amount of product needed to dechlor the volume you will refill. Put half the dechlor in and start refilling with tap water - probably safest to roughly match the temperature. As you near the end of the fill dump the other half of your dechlor amount in.
Now you retest your pH, ammonia and nitrite and note them in your log along with date, time, temp etc.

If ammonia and nitrite are not yet zero (yes, even if they are very low) you can do another change like this after an hour. It will get tedious fast, so use your judgement and do what you can. Perform your testing carefully and according to directions.

Watching fish die or manually performing the job a cycled biofilter should do can make anyone wish they had learned about the Add & Wait fishless cycling method described so well by rdd up in the pinned topics at the head of this forum. I suggest you read that one carefully, then read other topics and read help threads as beginners get helped - there's lots to learn but its fun and you get better.

Good Luck, ~~waterdrop~~

 

[chuckieboy]

Hi Kevin,

Sounds like you are not cycled yet. 2.0 parts per million of ammonia will continue to kill fish pretty rapidly. You are in a "fish-in" cycle as we call it. You will need to start doing 50% water changes.

You siphon out half the tank water. Look on your dechlor product (such as Prime or Stress Coat) and calc the amount of product needed to dechlor the volume you will refill. Put half the dechlor in and start refilling with tap water - probably safest to roughly match the temperature. As you near the end of the fill dump the other half of your dechlor amount in.
Now you retest your pH, ammonia and nitrite and note them in your log along with date, time, temp etc.

If ammonia and nitrite are not yet zero (yes, even if they are very low) you can do another change like this after an hour. It will get tedious fast, so use your judgement and do what you can. Perform your testing carefully and according to directions.

Watching fish die or manually performing the job a cycled biofilter should do can make anyone wish they had learned about the Add & Wait fishless cycling method described so well by rdd up in the pinned topics at the head of this forum. I suggest you read that one carefully, then read other topics and read help threads as beginners get helped - there's lots to learn but its fun and you get better.

Good Luck, ~~waterdrop~~

Hi Kevin,

Sounds like you are not cycled yet. 2.0 parts per million of ammonia will continue to kill fish pretty rapidly. You are in a "fish-in" cycle as we call it. You will need to start doing 50% water changes.

You siphon out half the tank water. Look on your dechlor product (such as Prime or Stress Coat) and calc the amount of product needed to dechlor the volume you will refill. Put half the dechlor in and start refilling with tap water - probably safest to roughly match the temperature. As you near the end of the fill dump the other half of your dechlor amount in.
Now you retest your pH, ammonia and nitrite and note them in your log along with date, time, temp etc.

If ammonia and nitrite are not yet zero (yes, even if they are very low) you can do another change like this after an hour. It will get tedious fast, so use your judgement and do what you can. Perform your testing carefully and according to directions.

Watching fish die or manually performing the job a cycled biofilter should do can make anyone wish they had learned about the Add & Wait fishless cycling method described so well by rdd up in the pinned topics at the head of this forum. I suggest you read that one carefully, then read other topics and read help threads as beginners get helped - there's lots to learn but its fun and you get better.

Good Luck, ~~waterdrop~~