pH at 8.2+

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00youknowit00 said:
I'm going to try and keep them going, I JUST did a PWC, and plan on doing one every 3 days or so instead of every week. I found AA after I found baby fish in my tank. Since then I've been doing what y'all advice, not my LFS.
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Sounds great ..but let the water tests determine your PWC's more or less ... so the API test master kit is a must! ... if you don't have it already. For now keeping the ammo at under .25ppm is the goal .. really any amount of ammo is not safe .. but at least under .25ppm.

Keep us posted! Good luck.
 
Okay, I was sold some things that suction to the glass and monitor the pH and ammonia constantly, I keep hearing about this API kit, but I don't have one, guess that's the next thing I'll need to get. And I'm pretty sure y'all are saving my fish, along with me sticking with it:p
 
The strips and stickers are about as accurate as looking at the tank and guessing, lol. You can find the API kit at virtually any chain store or lfs.
 
00youknowit00 said:
Yeah, I'll get an API kit today and test everything. And depending on my results is how often I should do a PWC correct?
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Correct. The goal is to keep ammonia and nitrItes under .25 at all times and using pwc's as your tool to accomplish that.

Also try to pick up a big bottle of Seachem Prime. It is a water conditioner / dechlorinator, but it also temporarily detoxifies ammonia and nitrItes to buy your fish some time in between water changes.

Remember to follow the article I linked. It walks you right through a fish-in cycle :)
 
Thanks for the compliment :). Cycling you tank is the most stressful, and IMO the most important part of owning an aquarium. Once everything is stabilized, it's pretty much clear sailing. As long as you do weekly cleaning and pwc's, never change filters until they are literally falling apart (just rinse them in removed tank water or dechlorinated water), and feed your fish...your aquarium will basically take care of itself and you can just sit back and enjoy :).
 
Only other question now really is whenever I feed them, its like they don't know its there, and it eventually falls to the bottom whenever it his the filter current. I'm hoping they're eating it at some point.
 
00youknowit00 said:
Only other question now really is whenever I feed them, its like they don't know its there, and it eventually falls to the bottom whenever it his the filter current. I'm hoping they're eating it at some point.
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If they are stressed from the tank cycling, not eating is to be expected. It's important to not overfeed at this point because any leftover food will decay and release even more ammonia into the tank. Fish can go a surprisingly long time without eating, and I'm sure once you get the water parameters where they should be...the fish will be happy to have some lunch :)

You can also turn off your filter during feeding to keep things a bit cleaner (what I do), it's just important to remember to turn it back on after.
 
eco23 said:
Thanks for the compliment :). Cycling you tank is the most stressful, and IMO the most important part of owning an aquarium. Once everything is stabilized, it's pretty much clear sailing. As long as you do weekly cleaning and pwc's, never change filters until they are literally falling apart (just rinse them in removed tank water or dechlorinated water), and feed your fish...your aquarium will basically take care of itself and you can just sit back and enjoy :).
Click to expand...

Like Eco23 said ... cycling is where you'll do 80% of the maintenance involved. so PWC's are for keeping ammo and nitrites down .. which requires frequent changes. Once your tank is cycled, the PWC's are for keeping nitrates down and introducing nutrients / minerals into the water ... and is not as frequent.

Keep at it!
 
Okay, I now have an API Master Test Kit. Here are my results:

pH: blue is darker than what is readable.
High Range pH: 8.2
Ammonia: 0.5ppm
Nitrite: 0.0ppm
Nitrate: 0.0ppm
 
00youknowit00 said:
Okay, I now have an API Master Test Kit. Here are my results:

pH: blue is darker than what is readable.
High Range pH: 8.2
Ammonia: 0.5ppm
Nitrite: 0.0ppm
Nitrate: 0.0ppm
Click to expand...

60% pwc to get the ammo down below .25, continue testing every day and do pwc's as necessary. It wouldn't be too long until you see no2 begin to appear. Ammonia will start rising faster and faster and the no2 will increase rapidly as well. After a time the ammonia will start staying low on it's own, the no2 will try to spike (always being kept down with pwc's) and somewhere in that time nitrAtes will show up. Just keep doing pwc's as needed to keep everything in safe levels and after time the ammonia and no2 will stay at zero. Then you just need to do weekly pwc's to keep nitrAtes under 20.

Once you get deeper into your cycle, make sure you follow the directions in the book for testing nitrAtes. The test is notoriously easy to mess up.
 
00youknowit00 said:
Ahh, that makes since. The advice and help here is much greater than anywhere else, I apreciate it all!
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try not to get discouraged either...as previously stated by numerous people, cycling is the most strenuous and unfun thing we as fish keepers have to do. you can compare it to building a foundation for a new house. if you take your time and build the foundation right, you'll rarely have problems with the house you build ontop of it..the same goes for if you rush it...it'll just cause problems until you go back and fix it :) I didn't even do any sort of cycle when I bought my 20 long...I simply filled it, and acclimated the fish to it.
:(:( and let me tell you, in the course of 4-5 months, I've spent every bit of double the money on fish compared to if I would've correctly cycled.of course I now have AA in my life and its made a WORLD of difference. my tanks grown by leaps and boundsand I have a fairly solid grasp on this hobby now:) just stick with it and enjoy the end results
 
negligent_inmate, I'm not discouraged yet! :) thankfully I found AA pretty quick thanks to Google! And now I'm getting everything on track!
 
your shark will nedd a much bigger tank(55+ gallons).you will either have to rehome it or upgrade.
 
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