GilraenTook
Aquarium Advice Newbie
Ah, my first post here and I am going to sound completely irresponsible, oops! 
To start off, I've been keeping fish for about 10 years now. At first I was the whole "the pet store obviously wouldn't give me bad info. Why are my fish dying???" type keeper, and after only having a betta or two for about 5 years, I branched back into trying(and succeeding with, for the most part) tropicals.
For the history when I was doing well with my fish, I was living in western Colorado, and had a 30 gallon with fancy goldfish, and a 10 gallon with a betta a lot of cherry shrimp, and a lot of plants. I found out back in August that I was moving back(thank goodness. . .) to Florida, and gave the goldfish back to the pet store, then got a couple of dwarf crayfish and moved everything to my 30.
I just got into Tampa earlier this week, and re-set up my tanks. Now comes the rather embarrassingly bad part. In the past, when I'd had my tanks set up with their plants, I was having trouble getting my test kit(even with the goldfish) to show any nitrates, and the ammonia/nitrites were always at 0. I put the betta, his shrimp and my crawdads(for the time being) into the 10 from the cooler they were in, and since I'd decided to get tiger barbs for the 30, got 5 of them. I usually don't cycle with fish, but figured that the plants would take care of the problem for me, since even when I'd gotten a 3rd goldfish to add to the 30 when I had them in there, I didn't get any sort of a spike in ammonia.
Well, overnight nearly all of my cherry shrimp died, as did one of the barbs. When I took the barb back(to be honest, none of them looked astounding in the store, but I figured it was a store-thing, since none of the ones in CO looked that great in-store before I took them home either.) and he checked the water I'd taken in(declaring it "fine" by a test strip, and not even being able to tell me the levels of anything. Pfft.) I noticed that the ammonia was greenish. Eep. So I went to a different store to get a liquid kit, since the store I was at didn't have any liquid ones for sale. I tested the 30 gallon and it came out with 2 ppm ammonia. Crud. I was rather surprised, since my tanks have never gotten that way before, so I tested the tap and it came out the same. Double crud. I added a single dose of ammo-lock(I think that's the one? Blue bottle, api product I want to say?) to the tank, and haven't checked it since then(it's been a couple of hours.)
This, of course, leaves me with two questions. First, how do I deal with the ammonia from the tap? Will the ammo-lock type products work well enough to keep the ammonia to a reasonable level before I put the water into the tank?
Also, what will this do to the cycle of the tanks? I know I'll need time to get any sort of bacterial growth in the tank, but how do I keep the ammonia level low enough to be "safe" while that is happening? I've never really had to deal with this sort of thing before, and as a result, I am sadly unknowing of how to do it =/
To start off, I've been keeping fish for about 10 years now. At first I was the whole "the pet store obviously wouldn't give me bad info. Why are my fish dying???" type keeper, and after only having a betta or two for about 5 years, I branched back into trying(and succeeding with, for the most part) tropicals.
For the history when I was doing well with my fish, I was living in western Colorado, and had a 30 gallon with fancy goldfish, and a 10 gallon with a betta a lot of cherry shrimp, and a lot of plants. I found out back in August that I was moving back(thank goodness. . .) to Florida, and gave the goldfish back to the pet store, then got a couple of dwarf crayfish and moved everything to my 30.
I just got into Tampa earlier this week, and re-set up my tanks. Now comes the rather embarrassingly bad part. In the past, when I'd had my tanks set up with their plants, I was having trouble getting my test kit(even with the goldfish) to show any nitrates, and the ammonia/nitrites were always at 0. I put the betta, his shrimp and my crawdads(for the time being) into the 10 from the cooler they were in, and since I'd decided to get tiger barbs for the 30, got 5 of them. I usually don't cycle with fish, but figured that the plants would take care of the problem for me, since even when I'd gotten a 3rd goldfish to add to the 30 when I had them in there, I didn't get any sort of a spike in ammonia.
Well, overnight nearly all of my cherry shrimp died, as did one of the barbs. When I took the barb back(to be honest, none of them looked astounding in the store, but I figured it was a store-thing, since none of the ones in CO looked that great in-store before I took them home either.) and he checked the water I'd taken in(declaring it "fine" by a test strip, and not even being able to tell me the levels of anything. Pfft.) I noticed that the ammonia was greenish. Eep. So I went to a different store to get a liquid kit, since the store I was at didn't have any liquid ones for sale. I tested the 30 gallon and it came out with 2 ppm ammonia. Crud. I was rather surprised, since my tanks have never gotten that way before, so I tested the tap and it came out the same. Double crud. I added a single dose of ammo-lock(I think that's the one? Blue bottle, api product I want to say?) to the tank, and haven't checked it since then(it's been a couple of hours.)
This, of course, leaves me with two questions. First, how do I deal with the ammonia from the tap? Will the ammo-lock type products work well enough to keep the ammonia to a reasonable level before I put the water into the tank?
Also, what will this do to the cycle of the tanks? I know I'll need time to get any sort of bacterial growth in the tank, but how do I keep the ammonia level low enough to be "safe" while that is happening? I've never really had to deal with this sort of thing before, and as a result, I am sadly unknowing of how to do it =/
