Not Another Tank?

[glolite]

Well here I am still, with a few cycled tanks, which have mysteriously filled up with fish over time

Anyway, saw these georgeous mollies at the lfs and this little voice said "try breeding mollies again" It just came out of the blue and I had this old 20g empty in the spare room, looking sad and unused plus an extra filter running on my 30g, so ........

Came home WITHOUT mollies I might add

Cleaned tank and added fresh conditioned water, as you do, added heater, touch of salt (marine) and left to stand for 48 hours.

I was just about to add the cycled filter when it seemed sensible to test the water first.
Ammonia 1.6; nitrites 0; pH 7.5

Tested the tap water: Ammo 0; nitrites 0

So do I add the filter and see if it brings the ammonia to 0 over 12 hours or do water changes beforehand?

I only cleaned out the tank with hot water, no chemicals so where's the ammonia come from??

 

[glolite]

Cleaned tank and added fresh conditioned water, as you do, added heater, touch of salt (marine) and left to stand for 48 hours.

I was just about to add the cycled filter when it seemed sensible to test the water first.
Ammonia 1.6; nitrites 0; pH 7.5

Tested the tap water: Ammo 0; nitrites 0

So do I add the filter and see if it brings the ammonia to 0 over 12 hours or do water changes beforehand?

I only cleaned out the tank with hot water, no chemicals so where's the ammonia come from??

Bump

 

[minxfishy]

Did you double check the results? Did you add any gravel that has been used before which may have traces of food, poop left in?

I would add the filter, check after 12 hours to see the results, providing amm/nitrI is 0, add fish and keep an eye on it.

 

[glolite]

Thanks. Yes I've done a 50% w/c and rechecked and the ammonia is same reading, strange.

The tank is bare, no gravel/sand. Will add filter and see what happens. My tapwater still reads nil ammonia today.

 

[minxfishy]

Have you done a test on your tap water, whereby you leave some sitting in a cup overnight and see what the results are in the morning? Try it and see what it reads.

 

[glolite]

Ok will do.

 

[glolite]

Interesting! Having left the same cup of water overnight, the ammonia reading is 2.4mg/l.

The newly set up tank having run overnight for 12 hours with 'established' filter has readings of:
Ammonia 0.6mg/l
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 30 (same as tapwater)
pH 7.5 to 8.0 (difficult to read)

So I'm doing a 50% waterchange on the new tank later. Will come back with the readings.