New To Keeping Tropical Freshwater Fish Help?

[andrewmartingibson@googlem]

l or shoud l say we wife and l started 10to12 weeks a go with juwel 180 rio with bio filter fitted the tank out loverly sandy botton rocks plastic plants
2 airfilters mini spots and all for night time eluminations looked great.
went by the book for the filter too kick in applied all correct filter start, 2 weeks pass like expecting parants with great enthusiasum we choose our
first fish 2 small danios lovingly we took them home followed 10 days later by 2 more danios and then around 8 days later 3 little panda corydo
life,s great in the tank then whiteout? the tanks like a bottle of milk fish floating on top this is7 am sunday morning wife panic l panic must rescue fish put fish in bucket with clean water aquasafe air pump fish come around big relife? don,t no what to do its sunday brain wave? change water
this l duly did with great haste 80% of it big mistake. tank now filled with freshwater and fish reinstalled all is well wrong 2 days later the same problem seek advise from local petshop fishsupplies great help water clears fish die.all of them in 2 days test the water for ammonia whowww
readings of .the scale could probably clean toilets with it back to petshop shyly with water sample inhand they confirm my findings they probably will clean toilet with it.manage to sort out ammonia now have a nitrate reading well above 110mmg/ltr any ideas how to reduce this level with out doing complete water change? andy/dawn

 

[glolite]

Well now you have no fish and a tank full of ammonia and nitrites you are in the process of fishless cycling which is what would have been better in the first place. Not your fault as you didn't know but best now to go to the newbies resource section of these forums. It will tell you all you need to know.

Sorry about your fish. Lots of us here have made similar mistakes but you have found a great forum for advice and help. Welcome and keep posting so we can help you.

 

[andrewmartingibson@googlem]

well now that wifey and me are at the fishless stage and the tank is longer a safe haven for fish lve done ammonia check now at 0.25 nitrate still above 110 mg/ltr no nitrite reading yet got togo and buy one

 

[andrewmartingibson@googlem]

well now that wifey and me are at the fishless stage and the tank is longer a safe haven for fish lve done ammonia check now at 0.25 nitrate still above 110 mg/ltr no nitrite reading yet got togo and buy one . do we just sit hear and wait? or is there something we can do to reduce he nitrate level?i.e. more filter start into the bio filter or is thier another way of boostering the bacteria.

 

[Curiosity101]

Well if you want to go down the fishless cycling route then Here is the link to what you need to read

Let me explain what happened...

You left the filter running as per the instructions...first mistake.
Leaving the filter running with no ammonia sourse does nothing to begin the cycling process

You put in filter start/ bacteria boost as per instructions...second mistake
These products don't work and are a waste of money

You went out and bought fish presuming you'd done everything correctly. Let me stress, THIS ISN'T YOUR FAULT. But it was the...third mistake
Because you didn't know that this was infact the beginning of your cycling process you hadn't read up on fish-in cycling and weren't prepared to deal with it.

Your water went cloudy, this is called a bacterial bloom. This is caused by having larger amounts of ammonia just circulating around the un-cycled tank. The bacteria in the bloom are aerobic and therefore use the same oxygen your fish use. This causing the fish to be short of oxygen and dart to the surface to gulp at air.
Bacterial blooms are pretty much unavoidable in an uncycled tank, but had you know you were fish in cycling you'd have been keeping the ammonia at around 0.25ppm or below and so the bloom would have been less prominent and have caused less trouble.

Overall the fish were poisoned by the levels of ammonia. This is not your fault, you were mis-informed and people can only work with the information they have.

After reading the link I gave you, you will realise you need some household ammonia. Normally bought from somewhere like boots or homebase or similar. Whilst out I'd really reccomend buying a nitrite testing kit.

As for your nitrates, if you're going down the fishless cycling route then you don't HAVE to remove them as they shouldn't affect the cycling process. Just make sure your pH doesn't dive bomb. It needs to be kept above 6.5 or so. So you may need to do a water change during the process just to up the pH. Don't use chemicals for this!

Finally just a couple of tips....
Don't go on what the fish shop say, some are good, some are bad. Do all of your own research either here, google, books etc etc. No matter what they say, I would trust TFF 100000000% times more than basically every fish shop in my area.

When you do get to the point of buying fish again, try to get together a list of fish you like before you go out to buy them. It very easy to add fish...but pretty hard to then remove them. Plus planning gives you something to do during the boring cycling process.


If you want to boost the bacteria then the only way to do it is to get some mature filter media from somewhere. You can try your local fish shops, or anyone with a tank near you (freshwater tanks + ponds only of course)

 

[andrewmartingibson@googlem]

thanks ,<curtiosity 101.> for advice do l still need to put ammonia in tank? even thou it has been running for several months? and start afresh.

 

[rdd1952]

Sorry to hear that you had problems but unfortunately, the advice given with most kits and in most books to set the tank up and let it run for 2 weeks really does nothing. There is no ammonia source so all it's really doing is moving water. The tank is no safer for fish after 2 weeks than it was when you finished filling it other than the temperature being stabilized.

The white spot was helped along by the high ammonia readings. Ammonia stresses the fish and stressed fish are much more prone to diseases than happy fish. It's a good idea to have a quarantine tank to put new fish in for 2 to 4 weeks before adding them to you main tank so that if they are carrying any disease when you buy them, you only have to treat them and not all your other fish. I would also be very leery of buying from that store again. If they sold you fish with white spot, it's likely that the next ones you buy will have the same problem.

Because of all the issues you had, I would do a complete water change (need to remove the high nitrates anyway) but keep the filter wet and only rinse in dechlorinated water. I strongly suspect that your tank is pretty much cycled since you have such a high nitrate level. Once you have it set back up, add some ammonia up to about 3 to 5 ppm and see how long that takes to process back to 0 ammonia and nitrate. Once that happens in about 12 hours, you should be able to add your full fish stock at once.

 

[Curiosity101]

Not to try and be funny....but...

His fish didn't have white spot (or not that he mentioned in the first post anyways)

If the original poster is now fishless cycling there is no need to do a water change unless the pH plummets.

Depending on how long it has now been without fish the bacteria will be dying off so the tank will be slowly becoming uncycled.
I agree by the end (I counted them having the fish for 22 days) they may have been close to being cycled. But also due to the extremely high ammonia the bacteria that initially grew may not have been the correct ones, so equally they may have been nowhere near being properly cycled and would've noticed another ammonia/nitrite spike in the following weeks.

 

[rabbut]

Actually, high Nitrate levels have been linked to slower bacteria growth in the filter. In English, this means that a 100% water change (or as close as you can practically manage) would speed up the cycle

If you are going to QT for only two weeks you may as well not bother. I QT stock from trusted sources for at least 4 weeks, new/unknown sources for 6 weeks, and un-trusted sources for at least 12 weeks. Most diseases will take about 3 weeks to crop-up in a FW tank, and you want to allow additional time for anything to propagate. 12 weeks on the un-trusted sources with me is down to avoiding anything that's slower still to develop

All the best
Rabbut

 

[Curiosity101]

Hmm, you learn something new every day.

Don't suppose you have to hand the sort of levels it took for Nitrates to start slowing things down?
Or where you read it? It might be interesting

 

[rabbut]

I think Timothy Hovenec (the researcher that un-covered the true nitrifying bacteria) stated the effects and associates "problematic values" on here at one point, though I don't have a link or said values to hand

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, that's correct, its Tim. Its when you start seeing those readings of 80ppm (with the API kit) and especially the 110 if I'm remembering the next one up, that its time to be thinking of a good 90/100% clear out. I'm sure that's what RDD was thinking of. High concentrations of both nitrates and conditioners have been mentioned by Tim as possible N-Bac growth inhibitors, though neither of these were subjected to objective tests in his papers. WD