Recent content by palacekeeper

Okay I’ll go ahead and do the cycle then and the water changes, thanks. I read about using a small shrimp for cycling before adding fish as one of the better methods. How long does that process normally take if i use a shrimp and spike the tank by adding the bacteria?

Okay so it sounds like I got wrapped around the axle unnecessarily with the whole ph thing. At this point the tank has been up for 6 days with no fish and is crystal clear. Is the once per day ph down that I added over the last 6 days a big deal to where I should drain and start over, or...

Okay so then just to confirm, it’s ok to put fish in a 7.6 ph tank that were in a 7.0 tank at the store? This is important because it does appear after additional testing that my water wants to stay at 7.4-7.6. Even a simple glass of water returns to this ph if i lower it and let it sit overnight.

Thanks for all the info so far on this. So what do you think I should do next? Has adding several rounds of ph down degraded the water quality? Should I drain and start over with new water? This tank is now at 6 days since I added the bacteria stuff. Also, if the water is very stable at 7.6 is...

What doesn’t make sense is that when I tested a glass of water straight from the tap it did not change at all after several hours, whereas the fish tank did rise about.4 in the same time period. I even tested the tap water after sitting overnight and no change, but the fish tank rose .6...

Hello all, first post in this forum. Recently decided to start up a freshwater biocube 16 to decorate my home office. It’s been about 20 years since I set up an aquarium so I’m definitely rusty. I’m holding off on adding any fish to my newly started tank until I confirm whether things are...