Not Sure What To Do?

[mike_980]

Hi,

It is likely to just be an algae bloom and is common in new tanks and will usually clear up of its own accord.

Not sure how long you have lights on the tank but dont have them on any longer than about 6 hours a day for the min if you need them on at all, if the water doesnt clear up you can do as you mentioned, a blackout which will help kill all the algae.


Andy

Thanks,

We've not really put the tank light on as the room itself is quite bright, had it on yesterday for a few hours yesterday and early this morning, but won't be doing that again for now. We have done a partial water change, cleaned and adjusted the filter so i'll see how it goes over the next few days.

dont clean the filter unless the flow of water has actually being slowed by sludge or your just getting rid of the bacteria youve already built up in there, if you need to clean any sludge build up then make sure you only give it a quick rinse with the dirty water from the tank itself and NOT tap water. never clean it properly just enough to free up the flow again

 

[chocolatedelight]

No, just gave it a swish in the water we syphoned off, would never clean it with tap water

 

[mike_980]

No, just gave it a swish in the water we syphoned off, would never clean it with tap water

good stuff

 

[chocolatedelight]

Ok, this fishy business gets even better, thanks to my sister!!

Right today we were going to start our cycling with stats of TAP WATER:
PH normal - 7.6
PH high - 7.8
Ammonia - hubby said it looked between 0 and 0.25
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate hubby said it looked between 10 and 20

May I stress all these tests were taken by hubby and im sure he has messed up somewhere along the way. Anyhoo tank water that has been sitting there since saturday, the worthless cycle stuff that came with the tank and a little bit of fish food gave the following:

PH norm - 7.6
PH High - between 7.8 & 8 although he said looked more 8
Ammonia - same as above
Nitrite - 1.00
Nitrate - same as above

Right so with all that said we were going to post these and start the fishless cycle.....until sister decides to pop up with a fish!! I did not mention anything to my sister about our new tank so thought this was odd, until I found out that my eldest son had been "texting" her about the tank and it having no fish even though I told him the tank wasn't ready, the cheeky goat must have thought I was trying to do him out of fish! So along comes favourite aunt with the soloution, naturally i'm chessed off to say the least as now I have to figure out what to do with it . It took me nearly an hour to figure out what it was by the way as I asked her and she said she forgot, luckly on the bag it came in, it had BT and after some googling matched it up to a black Tetra which isn't a fish I would have purchased once tank was cycled, however he/she is here and not sure what to do with it, it's been swimming around in a jug for a couple of hours as I thought it best to get it out of its bag it had been in for 4 hours prior.

So what should I do now??

 

[JoshuaA]

in fainess at least pets at home said a week before adding fish which going by what everyone is saying still isnt enough time, but local shop told me 24-48 hours!?!?

Both are wrong however your local shop pretty much implied the 24/48 hours for you to prepare for a fish-in cycle was likely waiting for the heater to warm your tank up to the required temperature and allow any dissolved carbon dioxide to gas off.

Furthermore I too fell into the exactly the same deal, we took the fish too and it went down hill for a month n a half we battled with 50 - 80% water changes DAILY and in vain our fish ended up with white spot and died a day after out treatment finished.

The bottle of Nutrafin Aqua Safe isn't very good, I would recommend you like myself to quickly buy an alternative which neutralises Ammonia. The problem with Aqua safe is it does not neutralise the Ammonia. (Neutralising Ammonia means chemically changing the Ammonia into Ammonium, it is less harmful to fish. Aqua safe breaks Chlorine down into harmless ions (?) and Chloromines(sp?) are broken down into Ammonia... the problem you will be presented with using Aqua safe is when you go to do a water change and add "fresh" water to the tank you are actually and most likely going to be introducing a readable amount of Ammonia into the tank. The first thing I actually did after buying your tank was buying a new bottle of Aqua safe, about 375ml I think for £10! To make it worse the quantity and frequency of water changes meant we were using copious amounts of Aqua safe but also later found out of this stupid fact about Chloromines being converted into Ammonia! Like a previous member has suggested Prime is a good candidate SeaChem Prime is what I also bought, its super concentrated not as concentrated as pond conditioner though (which in fact you can also use!!) but it also neutralising Ammonia/Nitrite/Nitrate and heavy metals which is great for your fishies!

I found our bottle of Nutrafin Cycle didn't even contain enough in the bottle for one days worth of treatment.

Finally, I would suggest your husband looking into buying a new filter, I struggled to get the Stingray 15 filter to work, I repeatedly tried but it never pumped water through the filter properly. I then tried it again on a 40 litre tank however it leaked repeatedly and the impeller clogged because of this daily. I replaced this filter with a Fluval U2 which is an excellent filter, it is a perfect filter for your elite 60 as takes up similar amounts of space as the stingray, especially if you place it in the corner.

P.S

You might get frustrated you're probably going to need to buy other equipment or treatments but remember you got here before I did. The 45 days me and my girlfriend went through was nothing but heartache seeing our poor fish suffer infront of us. P@H wouldn't even take them back and even advised me when they tested our Ammonia and it was 1ppm that we shouldn't water change daily and wait 5 days to do another one!!

Also the sign of Nitrite is very good!

 

[OldMan47]

What to do with your new fish is easy, call up auntie and have her deal with it. It does not belong in your tank and is not your problem.

You must choose to either do a fish-in or a fishless cycle. Either one is yours to do, not your son's and is also not auntie's choice. The fishless cycle means living with no fish in the tank for over a month while the filter is properly prepared to support your choice of fish. A fish-in cycle is ten times the work but will let you get a few fish of your choice right away.

There are some very good articles on both methods right here on TFF. I have a link to each thread in my signature area. Please read up on both before deciding which way to go.

 

[AquaticRex]

hi! yea the cloudiness is normal. a tank requires good bacteria or the fish can't properly live in it. it will settle, its pretty much your tank recycling which is not a problem. as for the space in your tank that some1 posted, i'm not sure how big your tank or goldfish are exactly but be prepared, cause my goldfish are the size of baseballs at 4 years old in a 60 gallon tank. i'm sure that they only grow to the tank size though. anywho!! good luck with the fishes!!

 

[OldMan47]

That is a common misconception Rex. Goldfish, or almost any other fish, will keep right on growing as long as their water is maintained in good condition and they are well fed. That means that the fish will slowly become more and more crowded in a small tank. Some of the fancy goldfish can indeed take on a rounded shape like a softball and do not get nearly as long as a common goldfish. Common goldfish will grow to well over a foot in length and will not take very long to acquire that size. A rule of thumb we often use is the first goldfish takes 20 to 30 gallons of water and each additional goldfish requires another 10 gallons.

 

[waterdrop]

Agree.

 

[chocolatedelight]

Ok, so we now we have/ are stuck with this fish in the tank I want to speed up the cycling so he/she doesn't have to suffer for too long whilst cycling. Someone with a mature tank has kindly offered up some of their filter pads and while I am sure they will be able to tell me what to do with it once I get home, I think its best I find out now just in case I need to buy something beforehand. I do not know what filter the person has but I have a stingray, would I be able to squish the mature pads into my stingray, or should I pop it into a filter media bag or pop socks (I read about the pop socks somewhere else but was refering to gravel)making sure it is placed where the water flow is good, also whats the best way of transporting it home?

My hubbys handwriting is so scrawlly and goodness knows what half of what he has written for pervious days say but i can make out that yesterday at some point AMmonia was 0.50/1.0 and Nitrate was 40/60 but then he did a big water change and got that down, this morning (28th June) we had the following:

6am: Ph 7.6 (so far the Ph has remained the same from when he started testing a few days back, should we be doing Ph high?)
Am 0.25/0.50
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 20/40

We did around a 50% water change and then:

Am 0/025
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 5/10

With regards to our Ammonia, we are going to get another opinion as me and him see different things when on the lower levels (even our tap water before and after dechlorinated looks 0/0.25) is this normal and if not what can I do to get it down to a clear dead on zero?

Thanks.

 

[Curiosity101]

In a fully matured tank where you have ammonia in the tap water it shouldn't be an issue. Once you have a decent number of bacteria in the filter they will be able to deal with that within a matter of a couple of hours. Just try to avoid doing too many 50% + changes on a regular basis.

As for the fish, considering you said you wouldn't have picked it anyways I would return it to your sister or a shop. It seems silly putting a fish through a fish in cycle that you don't actually want to keep. You have to bear in mind that in the future that fish could really do with some more of it's own species to keep it happy.

 

[chocolatedelight]

In a fully matured tank where you have ammonia in the tap water it shouldn't be an issue. Once you have a decent number of bacteria in the filter they will be able to deal with that within a matter of a couple of hours. Just try to avoid doing too many 50% + changes on a regular basis.

As for the fish, considering you said you wouldn't have picked it anyways I would return it to your sister or a shop. It seems silly putting a fish through a fish in cycle that you don't actually want to keep. You have to bear in mind that in the future that fish could really do with some more of it's own species to keep it happy.

Whilst it wouldnt have been my choice it's here now so I just have to work with it and try and make things as comfy as I can, me and sis had arguement and all the rest of it and she reckons she couldnt take it back, but in all that time fish was just swimming around in jug and considering I have a cat it was either go in tank or get eaten, so now I am just trying to concentrate on getting the tank stable as quickly as poss. I suppose I could pop to lfs and see if they could have him...never thought of that.

 

[Curiosity101]

Alternatively advertise it on the classifieds here for free if you didn't want it. Or you can try aquarist-classifieds.co.uk. Eitherways, I'm not telling you to get rid of it, just that if you don't particularly want it long term then it seems sensible to re-home it sooner rather than later.

How were you planning on cycling before the fish arrived? Fishless with household ammonia?

 

[chocolatedelight]

Alternatively advertise it on the classifieds here for free if you didn't want it. Or you can try aquarist-classifieds.co.uk. Eitherways, I'm not telling you to get rid of it, just that if you don't particularly want it long term then it seems sensible to re-home it sooner rather than later.

How were you planning on cycling before the fish arrived? Fishless with household ammonia?

Was planning on doing fishless, but did not get round to adding ammonia (had tank filled with useless nutrafin cycle stuff) when he sprung up so hoping with these mature pads it will all be done sooner rather than later

 

[Curiosity101]

Thing is if you cycle with a single tetra and mature pads then you will cycle quickly but you'll have to introduce new stock very slowly.