Ten Gallon New Setup

[4seasons]

After losing 2 bettas in a one gallon and the filter quit on a 5 gallon after only a week I upgraded my sons betta tank to a 10 gallon Aquaculture Home Starter Kit. The tank came with an Aqua-tech 5-15 power filter, a pack of water conditioner, and lighted hood. I have already added a Hagen Elite 25w mini heater, 15 pounds of gravel several live plants a thermometer and my son's betta named Racer. With the idea of putting some more fish in I have ordered an air pump and bubble wand, and should have than in a week. I also have some betta food pellets, Jungle aquarium salt, Start Right, and Start Zyme. Also bought some Kordon Amquel and Rid-ich a net and gravel vac.
After doing some reading I have learned that I need a water test kit and need to cycle the tank. I am a little unsure of how to do this as most of what I have read is about fishless cycling. I don't mind doing water changes, I just don't want to have to tell my 4 year old that his fish died again. I was planning on adding some more fish later and am wondering if maybe sooner would be better to help in cycling, or if I should wait until things get more stable.
I am sure I'm not the first parent that went into this blind and found out quickly it is a lot more than what they tell you at the pet store to keeping a fish.

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum 4seasons.
Do not add any more fish yet. Instead recognize that your tank is in a fish-in cycle and arm yourself with a decent liquid type test kit that can at least test reliably for ammonia and nitrites. With that kit you will be able to guide yourself to do adequate water change for the betta's health.
Let me give a quick and I hope helpful statement. Do not use any of that chemical soup you have been talked into buying. The salt, ich cure, and artificial starter chemicals are mostly just patent medicine type things. Salt is useful for treating some fish ailments but should not be used as a preventive. Ich curing chemicals do work but you don't have ich and it is a parasite. Unless you introduce something carrying ich, it can sit on the shelf beside the salt. Check the Start right and Start Zyme to see if one of them is a dechlorinator. If it is, that is something you will actually use, the other is a waste of money but use it if it makes you feel better. So far we have not seen cases where quick start formulations actually caused any harm to fish although they sometimes make people confident they are doing the right thing while not doing a proper cycle. In that case I suppose you could say the formulation did some harm. Actually, I believe the Amquel is your dechlorinator so both of the other chemicals will be nothing but snake oil.

 

[Alm0stAwesome]

Hi there! How long have you have your betta in the new tank? With a fish-in cycle you'll be doing daily, fairly large water changes but with a 10 gallon tank it's not *too* painful (I have a 10 gallon too ) You will eventually be able to add some more fish but that's probably going to be a couple of weeks down the line. You have to be careful what you put in your tank with a betta but there are lots of options

First order of business is a water change and a test kit!

 

[TheJ0kerrr]

Like many, I also learned the hard way about cycling. My girlfriend wanted a betta for christmas, so i figured it couldn't be too much work, and they're only like $5, so I went in and bought a betta with a half-gallon bowl that had some gravel and a little plastic tree included. The young girl at the LFS sold me a few products with that to treat water, just like you.

So I fill the bowl, add the products, wait for water to reach room temp and put the betta in there. All looked good and girlfriend was happy when she got home. Then a week later, the betta is dead. I figured it was probably due to water temperature that was around 68-70F which is obviously a bit cold for a betta.

A few weeks later, girlfriend decided she wanted some goldfish... so we head to the LFS and ask for that. I was sceptic about goldfish in a bowl, so I asked the lady and she said they would be fine (yes, 2 goldfish in a 0.5 gallon bowl!!). Now it became obvious pretty fast that they were not happy at all. So I went into Walmart and bought a 10 gallon with some gravel and a few ornaments. Fill it up, add the water treatment and everything...then I put the goldfish in there. Wow, now they looked happy with "so much space!!"

The next day, we wake up and one of the fish has his nose sticking into the filter intake...he was just floating around pretty much dead. Now I was pissed and this is when I really started to read everything I could find and found out about (fish-in) cycling and stuff.

I brought back the other goldfish (to another LFS), bought a heater and got 3 WCMM's which i've managed to keep for 6-7 weeks now. Cycle is taking forever, but at least i'm not flushing dead fish anymore!!

Now once I was a few weeks into that cycling, I found this site and learned about fishless cycling...but it was too late for that. As is for you apparently, so good luck to you!

 

[4seasons]

The Start Right removes chlorine and adds slime coat. The Start Zyme says it is to develop and maintain the biological filtration. Amquel detoxifies nitrate, nitrite, ammonia, chloramines, and chlorine, without interfering with biological filtration or mortifying bacteria. At least that is what the bottles say. Im wondering if I should stop using the Amquel to get a little ammonia so the cycle can start. But I have to get a test kit first so the levels don't get to high. Just learning about cycling so open to any good advice.

 

[TheJ0kerrr]

You don't need ammonia with a fish in there, the ammonia will be produced by the fish wastes and any uneaten food that stays the tank. In fact, you'll probably kill the fish right away if you add pure ammonia.

You have 2 choices... you either return the fish to the LFS (and try to explain to a 4 year old about fishless cycling ) or you do a fish-in cycling. Both methods are described in the beginners section, but they can't be mixed!

 

[4seasons]

You don't need ammonia with a fish in there, the ammonia will be produced by the fish wastes and any uneaten food that stays the tank. In fact, you'll probably kill the fish right away if you add pure ammonia.

You have 2 choices... you either return the fish to the LFS (and try to explain to a 4 year old about fishless cycling ) or you do a fish-in cycling. Both methods are described in the beginners section, but they can't be mixed!

Could you please point me to the beginners section that refers to fish-in cycling and how to do it right. Every time I use the word cycling in the search I get piles of fishless cycling threads but no real how to on doing it with fish.

 

[fluttermoth]

Click on the link in my sig and you'll find a list of articles, one of which is 'fish in cycling'

 

[TheJ0kerrr]

The beginners resource section is pinned at the top of this forum

And here is the Fish-in Cycling thread

Hope that helps!

 

[4seasons]

Thanks, been having a little difficulty with the search.

 

[OldMan47]

Amquel is indeed the dechlorinator then. It also sounds like you could use the Start Right as a dechlorinator but I hate it when they add things to "help the slime coat". A fish has a slime coat as needed to protect it from water conditions that it finds itself in. To truly promote a slime coat, the product would need to be an irritant. I assume that is not what they mean but instead the additive, often something like aloe vera, just makes the water surface a bit oily looking for a time. If you run out of Amquel during your cycle, go ahead and use the Start right.
The Safe Start is what is best known as useless, often called a filter aid by the sellers, but probably is harmless as well.

 

[4seasons]

I got my API Freshwater Master Test Kit yesterday. I ran all the tests and here are the numbers:

PH 7.8
Ammonia 0.25
Nitrite 0.00
Nitrate 0.00

The ammonia and nitrate were about what I expected but was a little disappointed that no nitrite was showing yet.
I have had this tank set up for 2 weeks but the filter was running in a 5 gallon for a week before so it has 3 weeks of fish in cycle time. Shouldn't I be seeing some nitrite by now?
I did a 20% water change and tested the tap water while I was at it. Our tap water has no ammonia and a PH of 6.4. So my next question is should I be concerned about the 7.8 PH in the tank? I would think that adding 6.4 PH water would be bringing it down but assuming that the tap water has been 6.4 from the beginning (which may not be the case) what would cause the PH to get up in the first place. I have never added anything that said it would change PH. Would the singe betta and 5 live plants raise PH?

 

[TheJ0kerrr]

For some reason, I could never read any nitrite in my 10 gallons with 3 white cloud minnows in it. Also, I barely had any ammonia except for once where it went up to maybe 0.5ppm. I made several water changes during that time as one of the minnows wasn't feeling too great. Then once he recovered and I read 0ppm on every tests, I went ahead and bought 3 more minnows.

This morning (5 days since introducing the 3 extra minnows), I have 0.25ppm ammonia and still no nitrite or nitrate. Not sure what's going on, but your case reminds me a lot of my experience.

I don't know if it's possible, but the only explanation for this would be that the fish produce very little ammonia on their own in a 10 gallon and that my tap water has no nitrifying bacteria at all which would prevent it from cycling...I could be very wrong though...

Edit : This is now over 7 weeks into my "cycle"...

 

[crazyforcordoras]

Strange. When I set up my fry tank, everything was stable from the beginning. I had the fry in it after 1 week and they thrived.

 

[OldMan47]

Jokerrr, this is not your cycle thread. At over 0.25 ppm of ammonia, you need a major water change.
4seasons, with about 0.25 ppm of ammonia, you need to do a large water change. Nitrites will not likely show up until about 2 weeks after you start your fish-in cycle so that part is also not too unusual. The high pH is a good thing as far as cycling your tank since it encourages the growth of beneficial bacteria. We use 0.25 ppm as a critical value for both ammonia and nitrite but in reality it is affected by the water's pH. At a high pH ammonia is lethal and at a low pH nitrite is lethal. Rather than introduce that added complexity to our advice, we simply insist that you deal with either chemical when you find it in your water. I have no idea how you can have a tap water pH of 6.4 while having a tank pH of over 7.0. The pH of a cycled tank tends to run in the other direction. Tap water with a high pH tends to become acidic as nitrates build since one form they take is nitric acid.