Brand New 40g

[hatchet]

I have everything setup now. Water in, chloride/chlorine begone stuff in. Letting it mix for awhile. There are quite a few air bubbles on everything but no problem with that. The LFS had every Bio product except for Bio-Spira. They had Bio Slime, Bio Coat, and one other I can't remember. I'm ordering some Bio-Spira but going to try the Cycle since I have it already. Once I get my digital camera back from work I'll snap some photos. I think it turned out alright but I don't know a lot.
I want to thank everyone that gave me advice.. thanks.

 

[Fishymike]

You got alot of good advice here. My two cents is this I use slimecoat w/ every water change.For cycling I usually get a couple zebras since they are hardy and I hate goldfish.I use an emperor 400 hob filter and 2 powerheads attached to an ugf it gives me plenty of filtration and a backup should one die.I would also suggest going to a fish shop over a pet store the folks at the fish shop usually have been doing this awhile and know alot more.Petrshop told a friend that a pacu was a small friendly fish.friendly maybe I read articles to the oppiusite but small no way

 

[hatchet]

What does the slimecoat do? I was wondering about Zebras or Platies for cycling. I'm going to get 2 of one or the other today. Oh I ended up switching up from the 170 to the Penguin 330. There was quite a lot of surface agitation when the wheels first started spinning but settled down after I lowered the water to the right level. It agitates the whole surface still.
I've had nothing in the tank as of yet (as far as anything live ) but there is what looks like small dust particles on the surface of the water. The rest of the water is crystal clear. Does anyone know what it could be? Maybe I didn't get the rock and fake plants clean enough? Currently the water is set at 78F - is that going to be alright?
Thanks again for all the help.

 

[An t-iasg]

Hi Hatchet, I wouldn't worry about the small particles on top of the water. I just set up some tanks and I saw that too. In my tanks, it turned out to be very small air bubbles that settled down in a few days. I would keep an eye on it, but it should settle down and go away.

A fish has a natural slime coat that helps keep him healthy. When the slime coat is disrupted (due to fighting with other fish, stress, injury) the possibility for a bacterial or fungal infection is greater. The water conditioner that I use, Novaqua, removes chlorine and also enhances the slime coat. I think most of the dechlorinators have a slime coat enhancement.

I don't have any of the fish that you're thinking about, but I think 78 degrees is fine for tropical fish. (I have bettas, which prefer a temp of 80 or 82 degrees.)

I would not, in my opinion, try the Cycle product. I would order and wait for the Bio-Spira. I just placed an order from The Fish Store as mentioned in another post www.fishstoretn.com and my Bio-Spira came in 3 days. I just added it today! I've used it before, and it's wonderful. I would not add Cycle now, and then add Bio-Spira later. IMHO, I would just use the Bio-Spira and not the Cycle. The Bio-Spira is meant to be added to a full tank of fish. Add all your fish, then add the Bio-Spira. The Bio-Spira bacteria will start "eating" the ammonia and the nitrites. Then you remove the nitrates with water changes. Another good thing about using Bio-Spira is that you can add all your fish at once. This may prevent any aggression toward a newly-added fish a few weeks later, as the "old" fish have established their territories already.

Here is a thread about Cycle if you're interested:

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/viewtopic.php?t=12629&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=cycle&start=0

 

[hatchet]

Well I just 2 - Mickey Mouse Platys today. I had already added Cycle yesterday.. is that going to mess with me if I get the Bio-Spira? Or do I just proceed as if I had never put the Bio-Spira in? I didn't realize that you could add all your fish with Bio-Spira. That would make quite a few less trips to the LFS. I went around to a few LFS's today and nobody had even heard of Bio-Spira. I've got one more to go to tomorrow that's a little farther away. So I hope they'll have it - that is if it's not a bad thing to put in after Cycle.
Hoping for the best - preparing for the worst.
And thanks for the advice... although stupidly I disregarded it before I even read it.

 

[hatchet]

I've checked out every fish store, pet store, and pony store in a 30 mile radius. Nobody had even heard of Bio-Spira. I tried to convince a couple of the smaller shops to stock it but not many were too accepting of me telling them that their store was deficient..hah. Oh well.
Anyway if you're reading Bernie I just ordered some Bio-Spira from your store.

 

[An t-iasg]

The nearest store to me that has Bio-Spira is an hour away -- not real local! So this time (a few weeks ago) I ordered from Bernie and the Bio-Spira came quickly and it was packaged very well!

I would do a big water change before adding the Bio-Spira. The Bio-Spira bacteria will grow in the gravel, decorations, a sponge filter (I just poured mine onto the sponge filter) and really isn't in the water column. The Cycle bacteria may be the same way, but I would do a water change first -- it can't hurt. Also, as mentioned in the other posts that I linked, Cycle may be high in nitrates, so you want to get that out of the tank. During the normal biological cycle, when nitrates are in the 20-40 ppm range, the biological cycle is complete. So you would want to get the possibly high nitrates from the Cycle product out of the water before adding the Bio-Spira and starting it on the biological cycle.

 

[hatchet]

Thanks for the info. I was going to do that very thing.. just because by that time I figured it would need it. So you just confirmed another reason for me to do it.
Right now with the 2 platys in there the ammonia is between .5 and 1 - Nitrites are still at 0 as well as Nitrates. So I think it'll be alright until Wednesday or so when the Bio-Spira gets here. I'll be checking all levels at least once a day anyway though.