dionisk
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Well, I'm a new starting aquarist. I bought a topfin 37g starter kit, set everything up, added the amounts of Nutrafin cycle that the guide recommended and waited 24 hours. My levels seem to have been fine, so I bought 5 tiger barbs to do a fish cycle as another site recommended. They were all dead 12-24 hours later. I checked the 3 levels and the only thing present was ammonia, which was at 0.25ppm (can tiger barbs die from that amount?).
Anyway, that pretty much turned me off from doing fish cycles, so now its fishless. I replaced my plastic plants with some live plants (4 stems of wisteria, 3ish java ferns, 2 moss balls [from lfs tank, figured it would help with seeding] some other floating moss, and one 2 lb rock from another seeded lfs tank. My substrate is a bottom layer of gravel, then a small half inch-inch layer of plant substrate (I don't have the bag anymore, it was kind of gravel sized black substrate), topped off by 1-3" of sand depending on the area). Do I need a better light? I don't know exactly what bulb came with my starter kit except that kits flourescent 30".
I also bought a bottle of Tetra Safestart, added the designated amount for my 37g, have the water temp set to 80*F to encourage the bacteria to thrive, and have added ammonia. I'm using the Ace Hardware one, but I may have overdosed. I at first added a cap, which seemed to have turned up the readings to 1 ppm. I added a second cap and it seemed to have upped it to 4ppm, but I'm worried that it might be higher as it seems like its more than what the calculators are telling me to add and more than others have added.
I also ordered an Angel Plus active sponge filter that's coming in a couple days to further seed and help my tank cycle. But from what I have read the filter is quite large and would use up a bit too much space. So I'm planning on cutting it up and placing it in my current HOB filter to seed that way.
I am also curious as to what I should stock it with once its fully cycled? Any recommendations?
Aqadvisor seems to also tell me that my HOB filter is not enough, should i get another HOB filter, and if so, which one?
Thank you in advance!
Anyway, that pretty much turned me off from doing fish cycles, so now its fishless. I replaced my plastic plants with some live plants (4 stems of wisteria, 3ish java ferns, 2 moss balls [from lfs tank, figured it would help with seeding] some other floating moss, and one 2 lb rock from another seeded lfs tank. My substrate is a bottom layer of gravel, then a small half inch-inch layer of plant substrate (I don't have the bag anymore, it was kind of gravel sized black substrate), topped off by 1-3" of sand depending on the area). Do I need a better light? I don't know exactly what bulb came with my starter kit except that kits flourescent 30".
I also bought a bottle of Tetra Safestart, added the designated amount for my 37g, have the water temp set to 80*F to encourage the bacteria to thrive, and have added ammonia. I'm using the Ace Hardware one, but I may have overdosed. I at first added a cap, which seemed to have turned up the readings to 1 ppm. I added a second cap and it seemed to have upped it to 4ppm, but I'm worried that it might be higher as it seems like its more than what the calculators are telling me to add and more than others have added.
I also ordered an Angel Plus active sponge filter that's coming in a couple days to further seed and help my tank cycle. But from what I have read the filter is quite large and would use up a bit too much space. So I'm planning on cutting it up and placing it in my current HOB filter to seed that way.
I am also curious as to what I should stock it with once its fully cycled? Any recommendations?
Aqadvisor seems to also tell me that my HOB filter is not enough, should i get another HOB filter, and if so, which one?
Thank you in advance!
to AA! 
