Please Help...

[kimmypink]

Hi and happy new year to you all. My names Kim and as the title suggests I'm kinda new to this hobby, well I did actually own a tank with my brothers help when I was 13 years old. Please can someone give me some advice, I'm getting a 3ft tank (tropical) on thursday evening which I recently won on ebay and I'm unsure how long i leave the water before i add the fish that come with the setup? I've read so many sites and gained nothing but confusion please help if you can...

Kim x

 

[SagittarIain]

Hi and happy new year to you all. My names Kim and as the title suggests I'm kinda new to this hobby, well I did actually own a tank with my brothers help when I was 13 years old. Please can someone give me some advice, I'm getting a 3ft tank (tropical) on thursday evening which I recently won on ebay and I'm unsure how long i leave the water before i add the fish that come with the setup? I've read so many sites and gained nothing but confusion please help if you can...

Kim x

Hi happy new year to you to. My name is Iain and I am a newbie too.

the best thing to do is clean that tank without using anything like fairy just warm water.

its prob best to get the gravel and the REAL plants. (don't go with artifitial ones coz they will not Oxygenate the water)

Clean the gravel to the point where the water is clean and distribute a layer of it evenly

Add the water to which ever you think is best and add some liquid to the water that purifies the tap water (you can but some of this at your local aquatic place) also buy a testing kit to see if the water is ok to buy some fisheeeees

put on your filter and the water heater as this will take flipping ages (well with mine anyway)

give it a couple days and test the water (refer to instructions)

When done GO AND GET YOUR FISHEEEEES!!!!!!

xXX

 

[backtotropical]

Hello Kim and Iain and to both of you,

Whilst your advice is ok in part Iain, there are far better ways to prepare a tank for fish. You should both read about fishless cycling here.

In very short form, fish produce ammonia through respiration and doing the toilet. Ammonia is deadly to fish and must be removed from the tank. This is usually done by a bacteria colony which you must breed in your filter. Your filter does not come already laced with these bacteria and they take time to colonise.

The danger therefore with just filling the tank and then adding fish after a couple of days is that the ammonia will build up (because you haven't any bacteria in your filter) and the fish will die.

This is a very common mistake amongst new fishkeepers and is called 'New Tank Syndrome'.

Fishless cycling prepares the filter with bacteria before the fish are added which eliminates the risk of the fish dying in their own waste.

If you can't fishless cycle for any reason, there are a couple of other methods which I can talk you through.

Hope that helps you both.

Cheers

BTT

 

[OldMan47]

Good advice there BTT. I am glad you are getting two people off on the right foot.

 

[Tolak]

BTT! Half of keeping healthy fish is keeping healthy bacteria, the bio filtration in your filter.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

am i missing something, i think the OP may be buying a second hand tank complete with fish, if this is the case then you are best to transport the fish and as much of the water as possible from the tank, fill it up, plug all the equipment in so the tank gets up to temperature and then add the fish to the water.

normally we'd say use all new water however when buying second hand tanks from places like ebay they are often being sold on becfause people don't have time or want to care fro them anymore, therefore they are often poorly maintained and have old tank syndrome.

tanks with old tank syndrome must be treated with care, a large water change will likely kill the inhabitants so you need to do small water changes very frequently.

there's a pinned topic in the beginners resource centre which you should read on the subject of old tank sydrome.

do you have a test kit, if not you need to make this top priority, really you need it before the tank comes. you need a liquid based test kit, i recommend the API Fresh Water Master Test Kit, plenty of fish shops stock it, if no one near you has it then ebay always have them for around 15/20 quid.

you'll need to test the water as soon as you get the tank in and set up, if you post the results up here then we will eb able to take a rough guess at the health of the tank and the liklihood of old tank syndrome and advise accordingly.

of course if i've mis interpreted and it's a second hand tank but not coming with any fish then BTT is quite correct

 

[backtotropical]

You may have a point there, MW. I think I must have skipped over that bit when reading. I suppose it all depends whether the fish come with the tank and whether the old water is available?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yup...... await further info from the OP

helpfully though the link to the thread about old tank syndrome is in BTT's signature so have a look through that.

 

[waterdrop]

Ahh, the OP... we've lost poor kimmy, at this very moment the LFS has her dumping bags of ammo-chips in while large bags of large silver and rtbs acclimate... (ok,ok, I'll shut up)