Smudgers 2nd Tank

[Miss Wiggle]

so you're planning on moving over the fish from the existing tank to the new tank ??? sorry if you've said that before and I missed it or forgot

if so then just move them over and bring the filter with them, the volume of water doesn't matter, you already have a cycled filter that can cope with the amount of bio load that you have, just hook the filter up on the new tank and move them over, run it at least 1 month with both filters in tandem.

 

[waterdrop]

Just have a minute to grab the KH question here:

No, if KH drops, this is not due to anything bad in your tank. This can be a fairly natural process. Many things are involved but just to give one example, the beneficial bacteria in the filter actually *use* some of the carbonate hardness up in their process, so its going to get very slowly used up just from them doing their thing.

Yet another of the good things about water changes is that usually you are bringing in new tap water that has higher carbonate hardness than your tank water and thus you are refreshing the supply, bringing up the KH a bit.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[smudger123]

Yes it was my plan to move things over - we have the 240 set up next to the 125. When the 240 is cycled I will move 'round 1' fish over and then buy 'round 2' fish to go in 125 - by this time it will be acting as a mature quarantine tank (we left the sensitive fish until round 2 so 240 is mature by the time they're added if you get my drift). Eventually we will sell the 125 to buy smaller quarantine tank. It was an excellent plan until the 240 cycle stalled - now it seems it won't be this side of christmas before I have a fully stocked 240

I will do a water change tomorrow, see if that helps. I must admit i'd be a little nervous to move the 125 filter and all the fish over just in case I do something daft to kill the bacteria in it and we end up with lots of fish with no cycled tank. I am prone to daft things, like accidently sucking a cherry barb into the syphon ....shes fine though lol!

 

[smudger123]

The tank has cycled!! Huge water change and some mature sponge juice did the trick in two days.

Just did a 95% water change and decided on a layout. The left side is done and right side will have all of my 125 plants in a few months. Front left hand side has 25 pygmy chain swords and a corymbosa angustifolia that arn't growing well - plan to buy a new bulb to go in the compact starter unit that came with the tank (the 'moonlight kit') and install it on the front left flap to give that area a light boost and hopefully get a carpet effect. Loving the hobby now, today took me 7 hours but it flew by!

Any tips would be really appreciated, esp with right hand side..

The cave on the right was stolen from the other tank and replaced with a piece of bogwood. The sparklers have been so intrigued by the change - its very very cute

 

[smudger123]

Now i'm really really annoyed.

0,0 readings yesterday, 95% water change and added 3ppm ammonia. Woke up this morning to really REALLY cloudy white water with ammonia 0.25 and nitrite 0.5.

I want to sell the thing again - what happened?

edit: Ok looking at pictures I see I have an bacteria bloom. Can I assume this is because the sand got very disturbed yesterday and the bacteria growing there is now in the water? Is the bacteria dead - is this why my tank isn't cycled anymore?

 

[smudger123]

Day 45 - cycle seems to have died completely, no ammonia or nitrite being processed at all for days now The cycle was making no sense at all and seemed so unstable that we've decided to give up and start again.

We drained the tank this morning and removed the juwel filter - relpacing it with the tetratec ex1200. I cut one sponge into quarters (in a bucket of tank water) and placed two pieces into the ex1200 basket where the carbon would have gone. The other quarters I cut into small chunks and sprinkled a few in with the ceramic rings and bioballs. Then we squezed all the sponges and added the (now truely gross) bucket water to the ex1200.

Day 1: Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 8. Added 3ppm ammonia.

Hopefully something was alive in the juwel sponges so fingers crossed for a speedy cycle!

 

[Miss Wiggle]

oh no smudger! well fingers crossed for attempt No 2

 

[waterdrop]

wow.

 

[smudger123]

Thanks Miss Wiggle

Today has some good news, ammonia 0.75 and nitrite 0.25. Something made it so i'm chuffed!

Noticed a strange creature in there this morning, it was about an inch and a half long, skin coloured skinny wiggly worm thing. Swam like DNA if that makes sense. Not a parasite dangerous to fishies i hope?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

sorry no idea on the worm, take it out if you spot it again!

 

[smudger123]

Hi again all, been a while. Cant say things are great really with this one, unfortunately I lost control of the tank about 5 days ago to my very fed up partner after around 10 weeks of failed fishless cycling. The tank currently has 6 neons in it - dont go there! The tank was never stable, ammonia would be consumed one week then not the next, nitrite would be 0 for a few days then 5 for weeks then repeat. I have no idea why it wouldnt cycle but the last few days of my 12 hr testing showed 2ppm ammonia consumed in around 18hrs with no nitrite readings. I started to notice ammonia and nitrite readings are very different depending on where you take them from - they must be heavier molecules because the bottom of the tank was always darker than the top. LFS explained this is why you add bottom dwellers last - makes sense I suppose.

My partner fair play to him did two 50% water changes until the levels were ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 10 - proving he was listening to me after all lol. Then went to the village pet shop and came home with 6 neons. They are doing fine, readings at the bottom on day 2 are 0,0,10 and he's been told by the owner to add 6 fish weekly until fully stocked unless there are spikes, in which case do extra water changes and hold off adding any more until readings correct again.

The problem is I've just got this feeling he will be fine up until the 3rd or 4th round of fish then get major problems out of nowhere. The fishless cycle time and time again handled things for a while, cycled, then spiked before going back to day one behaviour again. Basically when the time comes is there anything I can buy ready to stablise things, maybe prime or more safestart etc?

Where are all the guides for fish cycling on the web anyway? Preferably one that doesnt mention fishless cycling or make any reference to being cruel because that is a very VERY sore point at the moment.

Oh update on the worm thing, its really long now, around 2 inches so the DNA swimming style is actually quite facinating. My partner has named him Gene and removing him is not an option - again, dont go there

 

[Tropicoll]

This might be a daft question but are you testing the Ph? From what I gather (after much reading!) it might be crashing and killing the cycle. The water change would help restore the Ph level which would (I think!) re-start the cycle...

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Oh I'm sorry to hear the fishless cycle didn't work out smudger, now don't panic over doing a fish-in cycle. you know it's not our favourite choice but with the right care and attention you can mitigate the risks to some extent.

There's two things to consider and work on at the moment really, firstly your goal for water quality is to keep ammonia and nitrite below 0.25ppm. obviously lower is better, if you can get them down to 0 then do so, however just keep them below 0.25ppm by doing water changes, make the changes as big or as often as you need to achieve those water levels.

The second thing is with fish-in cycling it's definately a case of softly softly catchy monkey, the more mature a bacteria colony is the quicker is can reproduce and double itself. In a nice mature tank (around 6 months after cycling) the filter bacteria can double in 24 hrs meaning you can double the amount of fish in the tank without any serious problems (although this is pushing it a bit and not recommended!!). Now in an immature tank it takes much longer for the filter bacteria to reproduce so the less fish you add and the longer you go between additions the less work you'll have to do with water changes etc or less risk of a mini cycle.

So what you need to do now is this

1 - Monitor levels daily, water changes to keep ammonia and nitrite below 0.25ppm
2 - When ammonia and nitrite stay at 0 with no water changes go to a weekly pattern of one 30% water change
3 - When levels are holding steady leave it as long as you can bear before adding more fish, try for at least 2 weeks then when you do add fish add no more than one third of the current stock. So as you have 6 neons now you should look to add 2 more or 2 equivalent sized fish. Don't panic over group numbers you can build up and it won't do the fish any harm to be in a smaller group for a couple of weeks again.

Then just repeat these steps over and over until the tank is cycled, add a few fish, monitor the water and do water changes, when it holds steady wait a couple of weeks then add one third more fish than you currently have, monitor the water again and so on until the tank is stocked.

 

[smudger123]

Hello again all! Just wanted to post an update on how our 240l tank is coming along. Firstly I want to say a huge thank you for everybodys help during my set up and fishless cycling, we really couldn't of done it without you! And of course a special thank you to Miss Wiggle for all the advice and support!

I am happy to report that our fish were added slowly without an ammonia crisis and now the tank is an absolute joy to have!

We went with the low light option in the end as recommended by Miss Wiggle and the plants are looking beautiful. The addition of the extra compact T5 didn't allow the 'grass' to thrive as i'd hoped but has given the ludwigia lovely dark red tips on the left hand side so it was worth it in the end. The corymbosa is incredible and wont stop growing! Ive now got 4 seperate ones thriving from the 2 original and Im totally chuffed with how bushy they've become! We give the plants a squirt of Tropica Plant Nutrition weekly and the laterite was a wonderful choice. We removed the Juwel filter in the end and replaced it with a Tetratec 1200 and Im happy to report after a few weeks the replacement hood began running silently

The neons survived the first couple of weeks just fine and the cherrys, shrimp and sparklers made the transition into the new tank very smoothly. We later added 6 peppered corydoras, 6 harlequin rasbora, 2 bolivian rams (Wilson and Dory), 6 congo tetras and last week my partner surprised me with a tiny smokey baby angel we've named Chloe O'Brian. Chloe is simply gorgeous but I will be watching her very closely for grumpiness when she's older with the neons around! Wilson my male Bolivian Ram is a little terror and sometimes could do with a smacked bum but he's soooo cute all is forgiven! But hands down the stunners of our tank are the congo tetras, I am sooooooo in love with them and their tiny teeth!!!

I thought you might like to see some pictures - the new ones are all a bit yellow but I hope you like them!...

First planted:

Now:

Congos, Neons and Harlequins:

Wilson:

Dory in her cave:

Wilson guarding his cave!

Chloe

 

[Miss Wiggle]

sounds like you're having a great time with the fish smudger!

sadly i can't view the pics from my work pc but I'm very much looking forward to looking them up when I get home tonight.