New To Hobby Need Advice

[kgdavis9]

Hey,

I have a 35 gal tank i got off a friend. right now i stripped it down and currently just finished a fishless cycle. I have a 1" layer of round pebble like gravel, covered by a 1" layer of play sand. I have 6 live plants....ferns (i can get the names if needed) and a tetra HOB filter (waitng for my Fluval 405 to arrive). I have a 18" 15watt bulb. I know some forums are for specific topics but i've done some reading not alot (2 young boys under two i dont have a whole lot of free time ) and the following questions i haven't been able to solve yet.

Questions:

1. my water is super cloudy. i added the sand two days ago will that go away or do i have a problem ( o yeah and i forgot to pre wash the sand!!!)

2. do i need more light to help my soon to be fish and exsisting plants? I live in the US (California) and I havent seen a 18" bulb brighter than 15 Watts.

3. My water readings are good but my PH is high. nitrate and nitrite 0. and will i get an ammonia spike when i add fish?

4. this might be a dumb question but when i go to get my fish do i buy them all at once, or do u buy a few at a time?

any help would be great i'm struggling a little here, thx in advance.

p.s nmonks (where ever u are) i have read a bunch of ur stuff what a help!

 

[Forestpisces]

Hey,

I have a 35 gal tank i got off a friend. right now i stripped it down and currently just finished a fishless cycle. I have a 1" layer of round pebble like gravel, covered by a 1" layer of play sand. I have 6 live plants....ferns (i can get the names if needed) and a tetra HOB filter (waitng for my Fluval 405 to arrive). I have a 18" 15watt bulb. I know some forums are for specific topics but i've done some reading not alot (2 young boys under two i dont have a whole lot of free time ) and the following questions i haven't been able to solve yet.

Questions:

1. my water is super cloudy. i added the sand two days ago will that go away or do i have a problem ( o yeah and i forgot to pre wash the sand!!!)This should clear up eventually waterchanges will help

2. do i need more light to help my soon to be fish and exsisting plants? I live in the US (California) and I havent seen a 18" bulb brighter than 15 Watts.That bulb should be fine for most easy growing plants

3. My water readings are good but my PH is high. nitrate and nitrite 0. and will i get an ammonia spike when i add fish?Have you cycled your tank? You may experience a slight spike in ammonia but nothing drastic, what is your ph?

4. this might be a dumb question but when i go to get my fish do i buy them all at once, or do u buy a few at a time?Not a dumb question at all, best to go a bit at a time

any help would be great i'm struggling a little here, thx in advance.

p.s nmonks (where ever u are) i have read a bunch of ur stuff what a help!

Hope i helped

 

[Erin8D]

Hey,

I have a 35 gal tank i got off a friend. right now i stripped it down and currently just finished a fishless cycle. I have a 1" layer of round pebble like gravel, covered by a 1" layer of play sand. I have 6 live plants....ferns (i can get the names if needed) and a tetra HOB filter (waitng for my Fluval 405 to arrive). I have a 18" 15watt bulb. I know some forums are for specific topics but i've done some reading not alot (2 young boys under two i dont have a whole lot of free time ) and the following questions i haven't been able to solve yet.

Questions:

1. my water is super cloudy. i added the sand two days ago will that go away or do i have a problem ( o yeah and i forgot to pre wash the sand!!!)

2. do i need more light to help my soon to be fish and exsisting plants? I live in the US (California) and I havent seen a 18" bulb brighter than 15 Watts.

3. My water readings are good but my PH is high. nitrate and nitrite 0. and will i get an ammonia spike when i add fish?

4. this might be a dumb question but when i go to get my fish do i buy them all at once, or do u buy a few at a time?

any help would be great i'm struggling a little here, thx in advance.

p.s nmonks (where ever u are) i have read a bunch of ur stuff what a help!

1. Yeah, just do a few water changes and you'll be fine
2. If you shoot for lots of live plants, then you might need to order one online
3. Possibly, but make sure to testy your water often after adding fish
4. No, thats a good question, add a few at a time, and you will be fine

 

[CKutz]

what do you mean by high ph? giving a number means much more.

glad to hear you did a fishless cycle, did you do this by adding ammonia to the tank and checking the levels?

if you did that, have you continued adding ammonia? the bacteria needs a constant supply of ammonia in order to live, so you have to keep adding ammonia until you get fish, the day you are ready to go get fish just change the water, then add your fish.

you might also want to do some serious water changes..i had HOB filters on my tank with sand, and i ended up wrecking two of the filters. it seems that if the sand gets stirred up much it will scratch up the impeller in the hob filter which messes up how it rotates. so you may want to put an aquarium safe sponge over where the water gets sucked into the filter and also do a bunch of water changes to get rid of that dirt floating around.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, agree with everything that CKutz just asked and said!

How long did your fishless cycle take? Are you still adding ammonia to keep your bacteria alive?

Agree about the large water changes to help with the unwashed sand. The fine sand gets between the impeller shaft and the impeller and ruins one or the other.

Also, one of the main points of doing a fishless cycle is so that you can do a large initial fish stocking, even a full stocking if you had a single species tank or such, but usually for community tanks there are other problems with various desired species needing addtional waiting time as some species of course do not do well in new tanks.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[CKutz]

of course you agree wd, i learned it all from you

(and probably some other members, but you really helped a lot, thank you)

 

[kgdavis9]

Hey,

I have a 35 gal tank i got off a friend. right now i stripped it down and currently just finished a fishless cycle. I have a 1" layer of round pebble like gravel, covered by a 1" layer of play sand. I have 6 live plants....ferns (i can get the names if needed) and a tetra HOB filter (waitng for my Fluval 405 to arrive). I have a 18" 15watt bulb. I know some forums are for specific topics but i've done some reading not alot (2 young boys under two i dont have a whole lot of free time ) and the following questions i haven't been able to solve yet.

Questions:

1. my water is super cloudy. i added the sand two days ago will that go away or do i have a problem ( o yeah and i forgot to pre wash the sand!!!)This should clear up eventually waterchanges will help

2. do i need more light to help my soon to be fish and exsisting plants? I live in the US (California) and I havent seen a 18" bulb brighter than 15 Watts.That bulb should be fine for most easy growing plants

3. My water readings are good but my PH is high. nitrate and nitrite 0. and will i get an ammonia spike when i add fish?Have you cycled your tank? You may experience a slight spike in ammonia but nothing drastic, what is your ph?

4. this might be a dumb question but when i go to get my fish do i buy them all at once, or do u buy a few at a time?Not a dumb question at all, best to go a bit at a time

any help would be great i'm struggling a little here, thx in advance.

p.s nmonks (where ever u are) i have read a bunch of ur stuff what a help!

Hope i helped

that was great thx i actually redid the tank and the water is clear!!! readings r still good but my ph is still 8.2

 

[kgdavis9]

thank you all for the help, i have stopped adding ammonia. i have been cycling for 3 weeks. my ph is 8.0 - 8.2. how much ammonia should i add after each water change?

ive had my plants for a week and they seem fine but the light just seems low for my size tank. will too much light hurt the plants or fish?

 

[OldMan47]

The light is too low to grow any but the very least demanding plants. I have some java moss in an unlighted tank that is doing OK so you could probably grow some of that but not much more. You will never find a T12 bulb that is more than 10 watts per foot. It is a standard value. If you want lights for plants, you get an upgrade lighting kit that lets you mount a T-5 HO inside your hood or a power compact set of lights inside your hood. The PC type is available from AHSupply but I am sure there must be other people who package them too. I bought a completely new T-5HO fixture from these people that is working well so far, I have only had it a week though. [URL="http/www.fishneedit.com/t5ho-ligh.html"]http/www.fishneedit.com/t5ho-ligh.html[/URL]

 

[fatheadminnow]

thank you all for the help, i have stopped adding ammonia. i have been cycling for 3 weeks. my ph is 8.0 - 8.2. how much ammonia should i add after each water change?

ive had my plants for a week and they seem fine but the light just seems low for my size tank. will too much light hurt the plants or fish?

You should continue adding the ammonia until you get your fish. When you add ammonia to your tank you are feeding the autotrophic bacteria that live in your filter. Now, if you stop adding ammonia, these beneficial bacteria that you need will start to die off. So you need to continue adding the ammonia to the tank, and the day you decide to get your fish, do a larger water change and then properly acclimate your fish to your tank.

I would up to about 4-5 ppm of ammonia. You can use the calculator at the top right of this page to determine how much ammonia you need to achieve 4-5 ppm in you tank. Then I would monitor your ammonia every day and once it starts to drop near zero, add the ammonia back up to 4-5 ppm.

What kind of test kit are you using? The reason I say this is because a lot of beginners buy test kits that have these little strips. These are very inaccurate kits and I would highly suggest not to use them. Instead, if you have not already, go out and buy a good liquid base test kit like the API Fresh Water Master Test Kit. This is a test kit that a lot of us one here use, and it is readily avaliable and a fair price as well.

Also, if your tank is fully cycled, even though you have live plants, you should have some reading of NitrAte on your test kit. So, your ammonia and nitrIte should be zero, but your NitrAte should be at some value greater than zero.

Right now, since you do not have any fish, there is really no point to do a water change unless you have a drastic drop in pH. Sometimes when people do fishless cycles by adding ammonia, the ammonia adds up really fast in the beginning. When there are high levels of ammonia in the water it makes the water very acidic, which tends to drop the pH. This is also determined by your kH as well. So in the weeks to come, keep a close eye on your water parameters, (Ammonia, NitrIte, Nitrate and pH).

For a good planted, easy to take care of tank, you want to aim around 1 to 1.5 WPG (Watts per Gallon). So take your size tank in gallons and divide it by the watts of your bulb to get your WPG. There really is no way to up the watts of your bulb, unless you buy a completely different type of bulb, so your best bet is to get 2 of the same type of bulb. This way you will have a total of 30 watts.

Too much light will yes, not be good for the plants IF there is no Co2 added in relation to how much light you have. If you stay under 2 WPG then you should not need to worry about adding any Co2. If you decide to go over 2 WPG in the future, then you need to start thinking about pumping Co2 in the tank. If plants get too much light and not enough Co2 then they will not be able to proform photosynthesis properly and they will most likely die. So, if I were you, I would look into getting another bulb so that way you will have 30 Watts for a total of .85 WPG, which is pretty good for low to medium lighted plants. Click in my SIG where is says "Plants and Cichlids" to get an idea of what type of plants are suitable for the amount of light you have.

So, make sure you continue to add ammonia to feed the autotrophic bacteria that live in your filter until you get your fish.

-FHM

 

[kgdavis9]

Again thank you all for the great advice sorry it took me so long to get back on here, work is crazy!

Plant problem -

I looked into getting better lighting but my budget won’t allow , so I will stick with low light plants... I have some java fern in there already and it seems to be ok.

Any other suggestions for easy to grow/low lights plants would be great!

I added a little more sand for my plants and that also seemed to help (went from about 1" to 2" deep)

Also should I add nutrients to help my plants since I can’t beef up the lighting?

Cycling -

As far as cycling how long should I cycle... I’ve added ammonia and the levels are starting to drop already. Fatheadminnow mentioned I should and ammonia again after the water levels out but how many times do I do this?
*By the way I use the API master kit for freshwater.*

Thx again u all have been a great help, saved me time and money already

 

[OldMan47]

You keep adding ammonia to raise the level to 5 ppm each time your level gets close to zero and watch for the bacteria to process all of that to zero in about 12 hours. There is no need to add the ammonia more than once a day though. When you are fully cycled, there will also be no nitrites at 12 hours. Usually, by the time both ammonia and nitrites are processing that quickly, the nitrates will be sky high. Right before you add fish, you do a huge water change to remove all the excess nitrates that have built up. If you do things this way, you can theoretically add all of your fish at once but most of us would advise that you only add maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of that amount in the initial stocking.

 

[jnrcorps]

i think the good people of this forum as hit the nail on the head... the advice that they have given you should have everything running just grand....

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, hi there again kgdavis,

I've read through your previous threads and this one and its not clear to me that you've fully made it into the thinking of the Add&Wait fishless cycling process we use (its difficult to judge from your posts, I could be wrong!) Its clear that you have an API liquid kit (which is good, you're not using strips as FHM has checked on) and its clear that you've probably found the right kind of household ammonia (what type did you find?) and used it in your fishless cycle but its not ever been clear in the posts whether you are tracking how many hours it takes for ammonia and nitrite to drop from 5ppm down to zero ppm and have been rigorous about proving the biofilter is mature enough. (oldman47 has outlined the basics of this in his post up above)... anyway, just wondering if I'm off base here. Normally people have a fair amount of trouble getting the biofilter to mature and perform its "trick" in 12 hours or under and we hear/see that frustration or the questioning in their posts! My concern is just with whether you've really "qualified" your biofilter as being up to the task and ready for fish?

~~waterdrop~~