fish in cycle, cloudy water?

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

Yea, I. Read all up on prime, and what you described is the way I understand it to work.

I have a question, my filters are so/so at best, and has gotten really loud. I am planning on getting an aqua clear 70 in a week and a half and replacing my 2 whispers, if I am mid cycle how should I go about this? My thought was use the sponge from the ac70, then put both the carbon filter pad and the black bio media mesh from the whispers on top of the sponge with the bag of bio beads from the ac70 on top, then once the bio filter is fully established take out the media from the whispers and replace it with the carbon bag that comes with the ac70 and the sponge and bio beads?

 

[Sharpchick]

I wouldn't use the carbon. But you can use the bag and stuff it with polyfill (quilt batting is what I use fairly frequently, and is a whole lot cheaper than filter floss).

And yes, use the media out of your old filters in your new one(s).

 

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

So my water is getting cloudy again, this time though there should be no more of the start zyme in the tank, so hopefully this cloudy water means the first wave of bacteria is settling in.

 

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

so I Just did a water test, was about to do a water change, yesterday it looked like my ammonia was over .50 ppm, and planed on a large PWC today, when I just did my test now, it looks like the ammonia is under .50 ppm now, not a lot, but definitely under, should I go ahead with my PWC or hold off and see if the first level bacteria is starting to work and it continues to drop on its own?

 

[Coz]

.5 is pretty high. I would be checking nitrites too. Once ammo starts to drop, nitrites will spike. I'm doin 50% pwc daily right now myself.

 

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

I just did a complete test, .50 ammonia, 0 nitrites, 0 nitrates, saturday I will be 2 weeks in, I reckon I will do a 50 - 60% PWC later tonight, want to give it a little more time and check the levels again just to see what it does between now and then.

 

[Convict2161]

I just did a complete test, .50 ammonia, 0 nitrites, 0 nitrates, saturday I will be 2 weeks in, I reckon I will do a 50 - 60% PWC later tonight, want to give it a little more time and check the levels again just to see what it does between now and then.

Just stay on top of it. Your doing just fine.

 

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

I got a question.

I was at the LFS today and I noticed they have a water changer with a 50 foot hose for around 55 bucks, that hose is actually long enough to get from my aquarium to my sink which is great with all these water changes I am doing, I am going to be picking it up next friday with my AC70.

my question is this, how exactly do I go about de-chlorinating when using a water changer? the water flows from the tap right into the tank, do I dose the whole volume of the tank before I start to fill it? do I wait until it is completely full then dose the tank volume, or do several small dosings while the filling is in progress? I would really hate to do it wrong and pump a bunch of chlorine into my tank and snuff out all the bacteria I am working on building lol.

 

[librarygirl]

I got a question.

I was at the LFS today and I noticed they have a water changer with a 50 foot hose for around 55 bucks, that hose is actually long enough to get from my aquarium to my sink which is great with all these water changes I am doing, I am going to be picking it up next friday with my AC70.

my question is this, how exactly do I go about de-chlorinating when using a water changer? the water flows from the tap right into the tank, do I dose the whole volume of the tank before I start to fill it? do I wait until it is completely full then dose the tank volume, or do several small dosings while the filling is in progress? I would really hate to do it wrong and pump a bunch of chlorine into my tank and snuff out all the bacteria I am working on building lol.

I use one of those water changers.....you'll be glad of not having to lug buckets around anymore. You would use it to drain as much of the water as you want (personally I find them cumbersome to do substrate cleanings with so I use a small siphon and bucket to siphon the bottom). Then just before you refill, dose the tank with dechlorinator for the whole volume of the tank (not just the water you are replacing), then start to refill.

 

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

here is a questions, I am using prime, on the back it says 5 ML for a 50 gal tank, I have a 29 gallon tank, should I be just adding 3 ML or can I over dose it a bit and use like 4 or 5 just to be safe?

 

[Sharpchick]

According to Seachem, overdosing with Prime, which contains reducing agents, can reduce oxygen in the water. They say it's rare, but it can happen.

I'd follow the bottle directions and just dose at 3 ml.

Here's Seachem's official response to the question.

 

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

water changer is one of the best purchases ever! makes life so much easier not having to make 3 or 4 trips with a 5 gallon bucket lol.

just a quick update, been over 2 weeks now with fish in, did a full work up this morning, about .75 ppm ammonia, zero trites, zero trates, did a 65% pwc, will check ammonia levels later tonight, just waiting ( not so ) patiently to get to the next stage of the nitrogen cycle so I can see that things are actually working / moving a long, hopefully it isn't too much longer.

 

[Sharpchick]

water changer is one of the best purchases ever! makes life so much easier not having to make 3 or 4 trips with a 5 gallon bucket lol.

Retiring from the bucket brigade didn't hurt my feelings one bit, either.

 

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

2 1/2 weeks in, zero change, water cloudy again, between .50 and .75 ppm ammonia, zero trites, zero trates, doing Bi daily large ( 40 - 70 %) PWCs.

is this normal? about how long on average should it take for things to start rolling a long?

 

[Coz]

I am 5 weeks into my fish-in cycle and dealing with high nitrites and doing daily pwc. I have low nitrates so I am on the downhill side. Sounds like you are on schedule.

I bought 35 ft of tubing and a cpl faucet adapters to fill my tank for less than $30

 

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

so update time, been 3 weeks with fish in today, still running around .50 ppm ammonia consistently, 0 nitrites, zero nitrates.

also, I went out and picked up a brand new aquaclear 70 to replace my 2 noisy whisper 10-30I that I was running, after reading the threads here I was unsure if it was a good idea cause lots of people were having noise issues, and sure enough this thing is ungodly loud, I have heard AC70 is supposedly silent, mine is not.

I pulled it apart and put vaseline on the impeller shaft, it quieted it down for maybe an hour, pulled it apart and put on more vasaline, again it was quiet for maybe an hour, then this morning when I was getting ready to take my dog out for a walk, I could clearly hear the filter running from my front room, which is about 10 feet down a hall from the room where I keep my tank AND behind a closed door, hardly silent.

at this point I am not sure If I want to pull it apart again and try to get it to quiet down, maybe call haegan and see what they have to say, or just take the thing back and exchange it for a new one, I absolutely love the flow and how customizable the media is, but as of right now it is just running way too loud, maybe I will try and get some video of just how loud it is and post it later on.

any advice would be hugely appreciated.

 

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

decided to do some more work after finding some stuff online about wrapping the seat for the plastic blade piece on the magnet with teflon tape, re lubed the shaft, just as noisy as before, and I am not talking a little background noise, this thing is very loud.

 

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

3 1/2 weeks in, just did a test after being out of town for 2 days.

.50 ppm ammonia
0 nitrites
very small trace ammounts of nitrates, less than 1ppm the color was just barely darker than zero.

 

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

Still running around 25 - 50 ppm ammonia and no tries and no trades, am I still on track or should something have changed / happened by now?

 

[Coz]

Are you doing any water changes?