Recent content by Cattrah

There are some bio balls and a few thin sponges the water passes through in the box where the pump is. So there’s place for bacteria to cycle the tank and it is lightly cycled. I couldn’t ever get enough brine shrimp in there to stay alive to have a heavy ammonia load for a large bacterial...

I have this tank I got from a mostly failed Kickstarter. I’ve never housed jellyfish in it because I’m not very confident it wouldn’t kill them because the sprayer bar creates this weird back suction that would likely suck in tentacles. While cycling the tank, I watched brine shrimp get sucked...

Cool. I put 1/2 tsp salt in the half gallon with tank water and put him in for 10 minutes then back to the main tank. He swam around pretty feverishly the whole time. I'll dip him for a few more days and see how he improves. Thanks for the input.

It was most likely just plain stress plus some "leftover" disease. The first fish I put in my tank I bought from Petco before I learned their stock is pretty much always sick. They died a day later. Had my water tested at petsmart and the parameters were perfect. I bought the fish I have now...

I have a Guppy with fin rot and I don't want to treat the whole main tank. Can I treat him in a 1/2 gallon betta bowl? I was just given the small tank (plan to use it for some shrimp or snails or an African dwarf frog -well i dunno if it's big enough for the frog) so I was just wondering if I...

Yesterday almost all spots were gone. This morning they are back with a vengeance on only the platy so I'm turning up the heat today and tomorrow. will leave it up for two weeks and do frequent PWCs. Hopefully my hesitation doesn't cost any lives. Thanks for the reply.

I'm sure this is asked a billion times. 10g 1 guppy 1 platy 3 ghost shrimp 0,0,5, 7.8 Tank has had fish in it for about 2.5 weeks after 5 week fishless cycle. We went out of town for the weekend (fish were only not fed for one day), the light stayed off the whole time. They were...

API liquid test for Ammonia and API test strips for the rest. I know test strips can be inaccurate which is why I took the water in for testing but the results were the same. I acclimated them over an hour and a half, removing 1/4 cup or less of water from the floating bag and adding the...

Just call me the fish killer :-( I've done everything to the letter and all my fish have died in less than 48 hours (1 platy, 1 swordtail, 1 guppy...3 ghost shrimp are thriving, eating, and swimming fine). Took my water in to LFS and had them test it cause I figured I MUST be reading my tests...

Thanks all. Excitement got the best of me and we got fish last night, spent an hour and a half acclimating them. Guppy, Swordtail and shrimp are all vigorous. Platy died over night. Water parameters are perfect this morning. He was lethargic when we brought him home, the pet store lady didn't...

I just finished my fishless cycle and I let the nitrites/nitrates go high in week three and then in week four I did three water changes (two 50% and one 80%) to bring them down some and then in week five I did one water change (50%) and a few days later the cycle was done. Probably not...

10 gal tank. Started my fishless cycle on 1/10, two weeks later the ammonia dropped out to zero on 1/27, Nitrites were high, nitrates climbing for a week. I've done about 4 water changes in the next two weeks to keep nitrites readable; dosing ammonia to 4ppm every other day. Nitrites just...

I was just curious really, I'm not looking to speed up my cycle right now since I'm already in the nitrite phase. In reality, it isn't all that cost effective, even if it does work. Sodium Nitrite is more readily available than Potassium Nitrite, but it's about $15 for 2 lbs and you'd probably...

When reading the main article for fishless cycling, they mentioned it would be nice to have a nitrite source so the ammonia and nitrite bacteria could start developing at the same time. Sodium nitrite is usually used for preservation of food/meats, comes as a powder. Has anyone considered this...

Yeah...we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, at least then I can say "natural causes" and not "I didn't know what I was doing and I killed it" haha.