Hello everyone, let me start off by stating that I am in fact new the the forums, but have been involved/interested in the hobby for several years. I say involved/interested because I was forced to take a time out while living abroad for 4 years.
Anyways, I decided to take some old parts and purchase the largest aquarium/stand my budget would currently allow. Sadly enough that was a 30 gallon tank. The only exciting part of this setup is I am severely over-filtering it using an old Emperor 400 which had been in storage for some time.
When it came time to cycle, I asked an employee at my local fish store about fishless cycling using pure ammonia as I had never messed with it before and was curious. He read me a large list of the evils and difficulties of fishless cycling, and recommended that instead I purchase 24 feeder goldfish, which seemed like a lot to me, especially since they were large goldfish, but he assured me that the large number would be fine with my filter and would later allow me to overstock the tank nicely.
My only problem was I didn't want to have to flush those poor goldfish upon the end of my cycle, nor did I want to wait until the end of their natural lifespans. He then offered to take them back when I was done with the cycle, so that I would not have to exterminate the little guys. This had me fairly intrigued so I gave it a shot.
This was rather different than I had cycled an aquarium before, which was the tried and true method of gradually adding hardy fish to the equation. The goldfish were living happily and healthily for the first several days, boom the bacterial bloom hits and the water became cloudy as could be expected, yet the fish still appeared healthy. Possibly 3-4 days after the water again began to clear the whole tank developed Ich. I figured with the amount of fish in the aquarium and the poor water quality due to cycling, this could be expected. 2 days later I woke up to 4 dead goldfish, and while they were extremely inexpensive feeder fish, I felt as if this entire process was very cruel and was disappointed with the fish store's advice.
Since then I have been steadily loosing fish, and am currently down to 13, nearly half the original tank's population. I am doing my best to ease their suffering with stress coat and by almost obsessively monitoring water quality. There is currently no sign at all of Ich in the tank.
Today I am about 3 weeks into my cycle, and ammonia levels are down from about 8ppm to .50ppm, and Nitrite/Nitrate is booming. I believe that the cycling process is in fact working and my tank is healthily developing to maturity. I just feel bad for the fish!
My questions are as follows:
1. Should I do a partial water change? I have never done it during a cycle before as from what I understand it ruins or delays the process further. I was just at the store yesterday and was told not to change the water, and that the fish are likely to be dying from at one time having had Ich.
2. Also in doing this water change, should I vacuum the gravel? (I am a big fan of simply vacuuming the gravel to remove the necessary water for changes) Is the detritus on the bottom of the tank important to the cycle even if I do change the water?
3. Sort of unrelated, but I am in fact running an Emperor 400, which comes with optional filter media cages. I am currently not using them, simply using 2 activated carbon pouches. The fish store told me not to worry about additional media at all. I have no phosphate or algae issues currently, so I had two ideas about what to use the additional slots for. My first idea was to simply put 2 more activated carbon pouches in for a total of 4, is this just overkill? My second idea, one which I like a little better is to fill the plastic cages with some type of biological filter media, (i.e. ceramic pellets) that will provide surface area for bacteria to grow. Has anyone ever tried it out? Will this restrict waterflow to dangerous levels?
4. Has this fish store given me any kind of sound advice? This is my first time dealing with the place, and unfortunately it is my only option outside of an hour and a half drive. Unfortunately they also lack perks like return policies for newly purchased fish.
I understand this was a super-long post, but thank you for reading it, and for any help you may render in advance!
Anyways, I decided to take some old parts and purchase the largest aquarium/stand my budget would currently allow. Sadly enough that was a 30 gallon tank. The only exciting part of this setup is I am severely over-filtering it using an old Emperor 400 which had been in storage for some time.
When it came time to cycle, I asked an employee at my local fish store about fishless cycling using pure ammonia as I had never messed with it before and was curious. He read me a large list of the evils and difficulties of fishless cycling, and recommended that instead I purchase 24 feeder goldfish, which seemed like a lot to me, especially since they were large goldfish, but he assured me that the large number would be fine with my filter and would later allow me to overstock the tank nicely.
My only problem was I didn't want to have to flush those poor goldfish upon the end of my cycle, nor did I want to wait until the end of their natural lifespans. He then offered to take them back when I was done with the cycle, so that I would not have to exterminate the little guys. This had me fairly intrigued so I gave it a shot.
This was rather different than I had cycled an aquarium before, which was the tried and true method of gradually adding hardy fish to the equation. The goldfish were living happily and healthily for the first several days, boom the bacterial bloom hits and the water became cloudy as could be expected, yet the fish still appeared healthy. Possibly 3-4 days after the water again began to clear the whole tank developed Ich. I figured with the amount of fish in the aquarium and the poor water quality due to cycling, this could be expected. 2 days later I woke up to 4 dead goldfish, and while they were extremely inexpensive feeder fish, I felt as if this entire process was very cruel and was disappointed with the fish store's advice.
Since then I have been steadily loosing fish, and am currently down to 13, nearly half the original tank's population. I am doing my best to ease their suffering with stress coat and by almost obsessively monitoring water quality. There is currently no sign at all of Ich in the tank.
Today I am about 3 weeks into my cycle, and ammonia levels are down from about 8ppm to .50ppm, and Nitrite/Nitrate is booming. I believe that the cycling process is in fact working and my tank is healthily developing to maturity. I just feel bad for the fish!
My questions are as follows:
1. Should I do a partial water change? I have never done it during a cycle before as from what I understand it ruins or delays the process further. I was just at the store yesterday and was told not to change the water, and that the fish are likely to be dying from at one time having had Ich.
2. Also in doing this water change, should I vacuum the gravel? (I am a big fan of simply vacuuming the gravel to remove the necessary water for changes) Is the detritus on the bottom of the tank important to the cycle even if I do change the water?
3. Sort of unrelated, but I am in fact running an Emperor 400, which comes with optional filter media cages. I am currently not using them, simply using 2 activated carbon pouches. The fish store told me not to worry about additional media at all. I have no phosphate or algae issues currently, so I had two ideas about what to use the additional slots for. My first idea was to simply put 2 more activated carbon pouches in for a total of 4, is this just overkill? My second idea, one which I like a little better is to fill the plastic cages with some type of biological filter media, (i.e. ceramic pellets) that will provide surface area for bacteria to grow. Has anyone ever tried it out? Will this restrict waterflow to dangerous levels?
4. Has this fish store given me any kind of sound advice? This is my first time dealing with the place, and unfortunately it is my only option outside of an hour and a half drive. Unfortunately they also lack perks like return policies for newly purchased fish.
I understand this was a super-long post, but thank you for reading it, and for any help you may render in advance!
