Guppy/platty/molly porblems

[Oohitsae]

Yeah, you can use fish food or a raw deshelled shrimp to produce to the ammonia rather than getting a bottle.

Just throw enough in there to try and produce 4ppm or near that and keep an eye on it. Add more if/when needed until you see nitrAtes and your ammonia drops to 0 within a few hours of adding more ammonia source. Then do a few large water changes to get your nitrates to a useable level and add as many fish as you want at once since the system is used to a lot of ammonia already.
It's not as exact as using bottled ammonia, but still better than doing fish-in cycling since it takes longer and you have to add fish slowly once cycled (if you add more) so the system won't go through more mini cycles.

 

[Wayne487]

Yeah, you can use fish food or a raw deshelled shrimp to produce to the ammonia rather than getting a bottle.

Just throw enough in there to try and produce 4ppm or near that and keep an eye on it. Add more if/when needed until you see nitrAtes and your ammonia drops to 0 within a few hours of adding more ammonia source. Then do a few large water changes to get your nitrates to a useable level and add as many fish as you want at once since the system is used to a lot of ammonia already.
It's not as exact as using bottled ammonia, but still better than doing fish-in cycling since it takes longer and you have to add fish slowly once cycled (if you add more) so the system won't go through more mini cycles.

Oh right ok thanks! If I do get this tank ill give that a try! How long does a Fishless cycle take? I'm going away in 3/4weeks and would like to be able to move the fish before then. I have a friend coming to feed the fish while I'm away but I'd have liked to separate some of them before going

 

[Canary bird]

I've just bought a Rena xp3 for my 200litre tank, and kept my eheim hob in there too, have you looked on eBay there are some bargains on there , that was where I first looked but unfortunately they don't ship to Tenerife, also the bigger tanks are cheap on there too, unlike here 700 euros for a 300 litre with stand second hand ! So were going to build our own .. Oh and the xp3 is really quiet, quieter than the internal one !

Good luck