Hello

[MisticX]

Montreal Canada area new member asks for advice (please feel free to post your opinions or advice)

i will italic what i consider (now) that was a mistake.

i'll post a log of my fish operations

March 30
Buy aquarium (30 gal) (120$ ... whole set)
Fill with water (fresh) (free)
treat water with dechlorinate
setup 1 thermostat @ 26C (free ... came with set)
setup 1 gravier filter (free ... came with set)
sidenote ... no substrat was installed yet

March 31
Setup thermostat @ 25.5C (80$)
buy fish gupy 8x (3 males +5 females)
buy zebra 5x (dunno sexes)
buy tetra neon 5x (2m 3f)
buy tetra black 3x (1m 2f)
buy platy 5x (2m 3f)
insert fish

April 1st
setup filtration pomp (50gal capacity) (70$)
setup air pump + "air shower" (free ... came with kit)

April 5
water becomes milky
buy test no2
buy test PH
buy cycle
use all 3 in recommended terms
ph normal, no2 OFF CHART (ye about twice darker then the 3.6 on the scale)

April 6
PWC 90%
ph 0, no2 0.3, added cycle

April 7
buy moly black (1m 2f)
water stays stable a biiit milky

April 8-12
started losing fish, gupy's, tetra neon black ...
most of them got caught in the water filter pump. since i turn off the filter at night)

April 12
buy gravel
wash rinse and re-rinse gravel
insert gravel
water becomes instantly milky-sandy
PWC 30%

April 13-16
again many fish die.
NO2 rock the sky even though i add cycle daily,

April 19
insert plants
ph stable, no2 stable at (estimated) 4.8

April 22
buy a water changing system (80$)
PWC 75%

April 22&23
PWC 75%

April 24-26
ph stable, no2 stable 4.8
pwc daily 30%
fish have very usual reproduction sessions (aproximate ... a LOT)

Aprill 27
wake up in the morning to find 2 black swimming worms in my tank
upon closer inspection i find a 3rd
upon even closer inspection i decide theyr not worms but fish 8-O
the 2 black moly females that i was betting will die due suspect "sit on the gravel" have just reduced weight ...

wake up wife to show her my 3 new addons ))
have blinking ideea ... check water filter
find 4th, ;( not moving ... i get it out and put it in the net so i inspect it closer, 4th starts moving
later during day i find a 5th newborn ... they are all 5 in a coca-cola bottle with a air hose and a thermostat in it.


... more to come ....


wake up in the morning

 

[MisticX]

a sad story that some of you might not want to read ...

one morning i wake up (forget exact date)
i find one of the tetra neon black caught in the water filter drain... dead
it's pair was continuously circling it (the dead fish)

i was too pained by the loss of one of my favored fish, so i stop the pump, and reach for the net, the fish floats for 2-3 seconds, then starts swimming, but i could tell already he will die.

which indeed happened about 2 minutes later.

i remove the fish, and go back to watch the tank with a bitter feeling (already lost over 14 fish that week... read up see how stupid i was)
i was watching the pair of the dead tetra ... it had just stoped swimming ... it was till alive cuz i kicked it with my finger, but it wasn't swimming as 20 seconds before (fast circling it's mate), it was just inert.

5 minutes later it was dead too.

 

[fijiwigi]

Welcome to the site. sorry to hear about your bad luck losing fish. Good thing you found this site hopefully with the help of the friendly people here you can have an awesome enjoyable fish keeping experience from now on. We all love to offer advice and be helpfull when we can.

 

[cmor1701d]

First, WELCOME TO AA!

Sorry to hear about yoru losses. Did the lfs not explain that you need to cycle the tank to build up beneficial bacteria before you add fish?

You should read the articles on this site starting with this one on fishless cycling.

I'm sure others will be chiming in shortly.

 

[krustykrab99]

With the cloudy water sounds like too much food, too many fish on a newly set up filter. If you feed with flake food any left over food clouds the water and also pollutes the water. Also if you feed these kinds of fish a lot of food their waste will also pollute. The filter needs a few weeks to completely set up so only one to two small fish at first then add more. Your best bet is to clean the tank and leave it free of fish for a week or two then add a couple of fish. If you have a couple left from the fish you first had you can put them back in after you clean it and every couple of days do a 5% water change until the filter has a chance to set up. If you don't have any fish put very small amounts of food in every couple of days to allow the bacteria in the filter to culture and filter the water.

 

[MisticX]

fish left
gupy 6x (2m 4f)
moly black 3x (1m 2f +5 new pups)
moly red 3x (3f)
tetra neon 3x (no ideea how to differentiate sex)
zebra 5x (idem)

i use solid food 6 days per week + boiled egg-yellow 1 day
use the 2 minutes method
(drop food in the tank in small quantities and if they eat it i drop more for 2 mins)

water cleared perfectly,
no2 levels are dropping slowly 1.6 now

i know about the fish less method already, but it's too late to apply it... i have a lot of fish in the tank already
and i estimate that if they survived 4 weeks in it, they will survive 2-3 more until the cycle is completely instated.


and btw, it was not bad luck with loosing fish, i was stupid.


also apologies for the ginormous posts ... wanted to be as specific as possible

 

[krustykrab99]

there solutions sold at most pet store full of bacteria to help start you filter. I have had a lot of luck with these solutions.

 

[melosu58]

You might want to post what`s going on in your tank in the FW forums. Not to many will see it here in the welcome forum. As a matter of fact I`ll move this to the appropriate forum. Welcome to AA

 

[FishEggs]

Partial water changes will be your best friend until the cycling is complete. I would test the water morning and evening to make sure your ammonia levels aren't to high and if they get to high do a partial water change. you might also want to put some filter floss or nylon stocking over the filter intake if your fish keep getting stuck there.

 

[Fishyfanatic]

Don't waste your time on the additives that claim to be full of bacteria. If they are sold on the shelf, they do not have live bacteria. Only use Bio Spira. It is kept in a refrigerator and must be kept cold at all times. The others are junk.

 

[MisticX]

Don't waste your time on the additives that claim to be full of bacteria. If they are sold on the shelf, they do not have live bacteria. Only use Bio Spira. It is kept in a refrigerator and must be kept cold at all times. The others are junk.

so u say that cycle is crap ?

LFS told me to use that to get the ammonia bacteria

 

[Purrbox]

Beneficial bacteria is naturally present in the water. Most people have reported that their aquariums cycled no faster when using cycle than not. Bio Spira (when stored properly) and used filter media from an established aquarium are the only two methods that I've heard of that actually speed up the process.

It's been speculated that Cycle and other similar products may contain beneficial bacteria but that it isn't live due to packaging which is why it doesn't actually help much if at all.

 

[MisticX]

then why are we advised to buy cycle and add it to the aquarium ??

 

[CatatonicBug]

then why are we advised to buy cycle and add it to the aquarium ??

Because LFS people like to take our money. I agree with the statement that the additives are junk. I used them in my large tank to try to jump-start the cycle, but my new 10g tank has just dropped to zero ammonia all by itself after just 14 days. It took my 47g tank much longer than that, with the addidtives, and it was only doing a mini-cycle. It's much less hassle, and much cheaper to do it without the additives.

 

[Fishyfanatic]

They advise you to buy it because it is money in their pocket. Don't trust what the lfs tells you unless you know the answer before asking. In the first year of fishkeeping I was sold so many products that have been tossed. Clarifiers, pH up, pH down, Proper pH, Nitrate reducers, Ammonia reducers, specialty media, ich medications, oh the list could go on and on. We even had Cycle and Bio Spira. They sell you the product that does nothing. You add fish to the tank along with the product like it tells you to. Two weeks later all the fish are dead from ammonia poisoning. You go back and buy more fish and more Cycle. It's a monetary cycle. The only things you need for your aquarium is a tank, water, heater, filter, dechlorinator, test kit, and fish. You don't need all of those additives and adjusters. Clarifiers and pH products are the biggest waste of money that is pushed on people that are new to aquaria. Check AA when you have any questions, we make no money off of our advice.

 

[MisticX]

good news

after 10 days of pwc 10-25% (degresive) my no2 went down to (close) 0
my PH is rising though ... very very very slow but it is.

causes ?

 

[Purrbox]

Cycling messes with your other parameters (or at least the test results on them), so until the cycle is complete I wouldn't worry about testing for things like pH.

 

[CatatonicBug]

Cycling messes with your other parameters (or at least the test results on them), so until the cycle is complete I wouldn't worry about testing for things like pH.

I agree. From what I have seen, controlling the PH is really not super important. It's more important that the PH remain stable than set a a particular number. As long as the PH does not swing up or down a lot after you add fish, the fish will adjust to whatever your PH is naturally. Concentrate on the nitrite to nitrate conversion, and once that cycle is complete, you're set for fish.

 

[Fishyfanatic]

Do you have anything in the tank such as corals, limestone, sea shells, or any other natural decor (besides driftwood)?

 

[MisticX]

i never trust anyone, that is a bug i got from my father

that being said, i did not trust you guys either (mea culpa if that offends)

contacted the Cycle producers (company called Hagen ... they also make the test kits that most of us use) their answer to the question

" What happens to the natural enzymes and bacterial that are supposed to exist in your product once the product is set on shelf at temperatures over 4C ? "

was
(not exact quote)

in the product that we provide we add ammonia nitrites and nitrates, furthermore thru specific chemical processes, the life cycle of the specified bacterias are very much slowed.
thus the bacteria have enough food to live for the duration of the shelf life.
Once they are mixed with large quantities of water, their life cycle is re-accelerated.


could be a good explanation.

what do you guys think about it ?


(and again sorry for playing the devil's advocate)