Open To All Sorts Of Advice

[Blakesley]

Hey everyone!

I just set up my 48 gal tank after a little while. I've got both an undergravel filter and an external filter running and it looks awesome! I just put in tiger barbs, a couple silver dollars, a blue gourami and a striped peacock eel. So far everything is great! I'll be doing 10% water changes every week to start off. I've got frozen blood worms, tropical flakes and veggies to feed.But just wanted any advice or tips you guys could give as to starting a tank again with these particular fish. Thanks so much!

 

[Curiosity101]

Well first things first, your tank wont be cycled and so you fish will currently be being exposed to very high levels of ammonia. Please buy yourself a liquid test kit to keep a check on the ammonia and nitrite levels in the coming weeks so you can do water changes as and when they're needed to keep the levels low enough.

Also I REALLY suggest you read the following...
What's Cycling
The Nitrogen Cycle
Fish-in Cycling

You are currently in a fish in cycle so please read the threads in the links I gave.

Just to add, there is also something called a fishless cycle where you get the tank ready for the fish using an artificial source of ammonia.

And for the record, the silver dollars will grow too large for your tank and should be in a larger group than they're currently in. But definitely do not buy anymore fish just yet due to the cycling situation you're in.

 

[Assaye]

Curiosity said it - check out the information on cycling and test your water.

Also be sure to research fish using multiple sources of info before buying them to save mistakes when fish get too big or are not kept in the right communities.

 

[monsterberry]

as the others said read as much as you can about cycling and i would suggest 20% water changer every other day until you get your ammonia stable and everything cycled that should keep the ammonia under controle i only joined 5 mins ago but ive kept fish for years and been a member of a few other fourms like monster fish keepers and wen i started shops give me the rong info and i put fish in uncycled aquariums

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Blakesley.
As others have already said, you are not going to be doing 10% weekly water changes if you want your fish to survive the first few weeks. Instead you are going to get a test kit that can measure at least ammonia and nitrites and will use it to judge the water changes you need. If any of your present fish are near full grown, you will be changing a lot of water every day to keep levels below the 0.25 ppm minimum that a typical test kit can measure. If your fish are smaller, you might possibly get by with the 20% every other day that Monsterberry gave as a guide, maybe that number worked for them. Until you have that test kit that C101 suggested, you simply will not know how much is enough. For more detail on the fish-in cycle, please read up on it where Curiosity suggested.

 

[waterdrop]

Agree with the others. You are lucky to have stumbled across TFF as now you may be able to save most or even all of your fish dispite not having built a biofilter prior to their tank introduction.

Large water changes with good technique will be the name of the game and measuring the water parameters will be the tool you use to know when and how much to do. Many of us like and use the API Freshwater Master Test Kit to measure ammonia, nitrite(NO2), pH and nitrate(NO3.)
The important thing is that its a liquid-reagent based test kit as opposed to paper strips.

Dose your return water with a good conditioner, like Seachem Prime and dose it at 1.5x to 2x (but not more than 2x) what the instructions say. Temperature matching of the return water can be done with your hand. Siphoning out of the water at the beginning of a water change should be done with a gravel-cleaning-siphon (assuming you have gravel) to help get more of the nitrites and nitrates going out with the old (previous day's for instance) water. As said above the max point for both poisons, ammonia and nitrite(NO2), is 0.25ppm.

~~waterdrop~~
ps. Welcome to TFF!