Added Bio-Spira...crossing my fingers.

[@rtemis]

Ok, I admit... My daughter and I are impatient!!! I forked out the money to buy Bio-Spira from my LFS and received it cold. Afraid of the costly magic potion getting too warm, I drove through a fast food joint and got an ice filled cup and put the Bio-Spira in it until I got home . As soon as I got home, I poured it in the tank and hopefuly it wasn't a waste of money. Wish me luck! I've noticed that my fillament is getting a dark color already. Could it be posible the bacteria is taking hold of my filter?

Those that have added the sweet juice, what happened. The LFS said I could put fish in in about a week and said the nitrites and nitrates probably wouldn't spike...hmmm. Is this hogwash? The LFS I go to only specializes in salt and a fresh water aquariums. The shop is gorgeous with all the tanks and all the fish look healtly.

 

[neilanh]

The dirt on the filter is most likely diatoms. AKA new tank syndrome. It's a brown algae that thrives on silicates, which are abundant in new tanks.

I've never personally used bio-spira, but I know others who have with great success. But, Ive heard it's hit or miss. If it wasn't handled properly during shipment, it'll be no good to you.

Good luck with it!

 

[An t-iasg]

I agree with neilanh - you could be seeing diatoms and Bio-spira must be refrigerated at every step in the shipping process or it's no good. I've had good packets that worked in about 2 days (not instantly). I've also had packets that did absolutely nothing.

So, did you add the Bio-spira to your tank already? Do you have fish now? The Bio-spira bacteria feeds on the fish waste. There are two strains of bacteria in there - one converts the ammonia to nitrites and the other converts the nitrites to nitrates. When you see a nitrate reading of between 10 and 20 ppm, your tank is cycled. But the fish waste must feed the bacteria , and in a cycled tank, the fish waste continues to feed the bacteria. But for now, if you have no fish, that expensive bacteria is going to starve. To prevent this, you could add a regular raw shrimp to the tank and let it decay or you could add pure ammonia to the tank. With either of these fishless cycling methods, don't add fish until the cycle is over! Bio-spira is meant to be added with fish. You can also use it to do a fishless cycle, but either way, it must have some food in the form of fish waste, pure ammonia, or decaying shrimp, or it will die.

 

[@rtemis]

I have been doing a fishless cycle for several days now using pure ammonia. NH3= ~4.5 ppm now. I just wanted to speed up the process with the bio-spira juice.

 

[An t-iasg]

I have been doing a fishless cycle for several days now using pure ammonia. NH3= ~4.5 ppm now. I just wanted to speed up the process with the bio-spira juice.

Sounds like you've got everything under control! When you said in the first post that the lfs said you can add fish in a week, it made me think that you put the Bio-Spira in and then were waiting a week.

 

[@rtemis]

Thanks for all your responses. I checked readings this morning just to see if the Bio-Spira was kicking in or I wasted my money. Well, my nitrite is starting to spike. I was happy to see the color change in the test tube.

Ammonia= ~4.5
Nitrite = .25
Nitrate = 5

 

[marchmaxima]

Sound like its going along fine. To give you something to compate to, last night, I had Amm = 2ppm, Nitrite = 5ppm, Nitrate = 10.

For the past few days, my Amm was 4ppm, my nitrite was lower (0.5) but then spiked to 5. Nitrite jhas been steadily and slowly reising.

The differnce betweeb our methods is that I have not used Bio-Spira (can't get it here) and I'm using raw prawn as my amm source).


Just remember to be patient with it all... I've been cycling the tank for 2 and a bit weeks now, so just keep takikng those tests every day and don't add any fish until Amm and Nitrite = 0.

Oh, and don't forget to get rid of the excessive nitrates by doing a water change before you add your new fish.

Are you up with the dos/donts of how to acclimite new fish?

 

[@rtemis]

Yea, I believe I'm up on how to add fish...Slowly and test to make sure I am not over taxing the aquarium with too many fish. I know to float the bag of new fish in the water to get the temperatures equal. Then add some of my tank water to the bag water right? Should I scoop the fish into my aquarium avoiding dumping the bag of water from LFS into my tank?
Check levels....

 

[marchmaxima]

Others might disagree, but I don't suggest floating bags in the aquarium. You can't say where that bag has been and you never know what might have got on it (hand cream, fly spray, etc. It only takes something like that to contaminate your tank. If you a prefer to float the bag, rinse with clean tap water (no soap) and towel dry the outside of the bag before you put it into the tank.

It may be a low risk issue, but it is a risk. I've had a few bad experiences as of late, so I'm probably a bit more paranoid than the average keeper.

Don't ever allow water from the LFS into your tank because if any parasite or infection is in the water, into the tank it will go. When it's time to put the fish into your tank, carefully net them and transfer them that way.

The longer you take to acclimate the fish the better. The drip method is the best method, although in a tank of your size it might not be practical. If you google "Drip Acclimation" you'll get a lot on the subject.

The next best thing to drip would be to slowly replace bag water with tank water. I would put the bag into a container and add 1/2 a cup of tank water every 10 mins. When you have 5 times more water than when you started with, hence the container), take out 1/2 the water from the bag and continue adding 1/2 cups of tank water until it is full.

In both cases you end up slowly acclimate them over a couple of hours.