New tank-Advice wanted

[EmptyH]

This is my first time having an aquarium and I want to try and do the best I can. I have a 55 gal tank which I bought on Saturday. I added two bags of gravel to the bottom, filled it full of water and added Aquarium Salt, De-clorinator, and a Cycle bateria. I hooked up a filter, water pump and heater and put a few decorations in the bottom.

Yesterday I got 5 Tiger Barbs, 1 Rainbow Shark and 1 Gold Gourami. The Tiger Barbs are very active, chasing each other and playing "tag". The Gourami and Rainbow Shark were both very shy. The shark found a nice spot under a sunken ship to hide out and the Gourami just stayed in the top corner of the tank.

This morning I decided to get a school of Malabar Danios. I got 5 of them and put them in and they are darting about and having a good ole time. The shark has started to come out and play and even the Gourami is moving about more. I was told by the lfs clerk that all of these fish a hardy and should be ok while the tank cycles.

I am not going to get any more fish until after it cycles, at which point I am thinking about getting 3 cories, a small pleco and maybe 5 neon tetras. Is this too many fish for my tank?

I have test strips to test the water and will be watching it closely. What else do I need to know to make sure my tank is happy and health?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[TomK2]

Well, I think you had better get a reliable liquid reagent test kit, and start testing for ammonia and nitrite right away. With that many fish, your tank is going to go through a full fledged cycle, with high ammonia and nitrite levels. The "cycle" products you added are not going to prevent this. You had best get a python water change system, since I think you are goin to need daily water changes to keep ammonia and nitrite levels down within a day or two. No more fish, and feed very sparingly. I hope I am wrong.......

 

[TomK2]

Oh, and welcome to AA!

If you can return some of the fish to lessen your bio-load, things will go easier for you. Check out the ariticles section on AA, or also

http://home.comcast.net/~tomstank/tomstank_files/page0017.htm

 

[malkore]

Be prepared for daily 50% water changes as you go through a fishy cycle. its not a lot of fun to change 20 gallons a day for 2-4 weeks, but its what you'll have to do in order to prevent fish from being permanently damaged by ammonia poisoning.

 

[EmptyH]

I just checked the chemistry of the water using the Mardel Test strips (I will try and get a liquid test kit tomorrow) and the levels look good so far:

Temp: 78
Nitrate 25
Nitrite 0
ammonia 0.3

How long will it take before I know that the tank is out of danger?

Thanks for the advise.

 

[TomK2]

It is a hard thing to predict. If you can get some filter media from an established tank to add to your filter, it can be done in less than a week, if you get enough. Otherwise, 2 weeks minimum, maybe as long as 4 to 6 weeks.

Test strips are realy inaccurate, so its hard to put any faith in the test you have done so far. Online the AP test kits are about $15. Petsolutions.com is in Ohio, I beleive, and you would probably get it within a day or two with regular shipping. Might as well order all the other stuff you have wanted too!

 

[Guest]

THe problem you are going to have is that you already have a very high bioload in that tank and it is going to take a loooong time to cycle. I made the same mistake when i bought my first 55 gallon.. i went and bought tons of fish right away and after almost 2 months my ammonia AND nitrites were still high with only trace nitrate. I finally took all the fish except for 5 out and the tank cycled in 2 days after that. Of course at the time i wasn't doing any water changes either and thats about the time i stumbled into AA. You will find tons of information here.

As Malkore said you are going to have to do daily water changes because even though the fish may survive the cycle, their gills can be permanently damamged by the ammonia and interfere with their respiration. If you can take any of the fish back at all it would help.. the less fish you have the easier its going to be to get the tank cycled. Then you can slowly start adding fish.

If you can get any filter media at all from the local fish store to help seed your filter it would also help.

 

[Blazeherd2306]

You will need to get a liquid test kit soon. Test strips aren't very accurate. For now you should do about 20-25 gallon water changes every day until you get the test kit. Then, once you get it, test the ammonia level. If it is over 1.0 ppm, do water changes until it is under 1.0 ppm. If your LFS has bio-spira, you may want to look into that, too. It adds bacteria to your tank to cycle it alot quicker. If you already have a cycled tank, add some of the gravel to the new tank to speed up the process.

HTH,
Justin