Conesus_Kid
Aquarium Advice Newbie
First off: Love the site and all of the advice I've found here. This is perhaps the best aquarist's resource I've found online to date.
Let me share my situation with you:
I'm a teacher, and at the end of last school year, I "inherited" two FW tanks from a fellow teacher who retired: a 55 gal and a 90 gal. The 55 contained (and still does), 4 angels, 4 silver dollars and about 10 tetras with a cory cat. Up until two weeks ago, the 90 contained two minnows (fatheads, I think) and a sunfish. Naturally, I wanted to do much more with the 90, so I brought its inhabitants home to my pond, and drained the water.
Here are my plans for the tank:
1) Remove gravel substrate and replace with sand.
2) Fill the tank with rocks, grapevines (to simulate underwater roots), and some plastic plants.
3) New tenants to include: 5-6 clown loaches, four bala sharks, a couple of kuhli loaches, schools of danios, barbs, and rasboras of various sorts, and a few gouramis. (not strictly a biotope aquarium, but all fish from SE Asia/India)
I am not new to the hobby, but have been out of it for about 10 years for various reasons. I have re-aquascaped the tank, filled it, and have begun fishless cycling, as I would like to get the tank fully established and add all of the fish at once.
A week before I drained the 90 gal, I added another Aquaclear 500 to the established 55 gal community tank with just a sponge, so I could use that for seeding the 90.
I filled the tank on Monday, transferred the sponge to one of the AC500's on the 90 and added pure ammonia Monday and yesterday (10 drops/10gal).
As of today, here are my readings:
Ammonia: between 1.0 and 2.0 ppm
Nitrite: 0 ppm
Nitrates: 10 ppm
I figure the nitrates are from a bit of the sludge that remained in the bottom of the tank before refilling it. Ideally, I would have completely cleaned and emptied it, but it's too big to move around and I am a bit impatient (not a good thing in this hobby, I realize!).
Are the colonies in that sponge not well enough established to tackle the ammonia? I would have thought for sure I'd see even a bit of nitrite.
The ammonia is a pure aqueous solution (from a science teacher ), so I don't think I poisoned the little buggers with any cleanser. I didn't add any more ammonia today, since it didn't look as if any was being consumed.
I said I was impatient, but I clearly will not add any fish at all until the tank has cycled. This is my first foray into fishless cycling, but reading about cycling times of 7-12 days has me thinking that I should be seeing some nitrite.
Any thoughts?
TIA
Let me share my situation with you:
I'm a teacher, and at the end of last school year, I "inherited" two FW tanks from a fellow teacher who retired: a 55 gal and a 90 gal. The 55 contained (and still does), 4 angels, 4 silver dollars and about 10 tetras with a cory cat. Up until two weeks ago, the 90 contained two minnows (fatheads, I think) and a sunfish. Naturally, I wanted to do much more with the 90, so I brought its inhabitants home to my pond, and drained the water.
Here are my plans for the tank:
1) Remove gravel substrate and replace with sand.
2) Fill the tank with rocks, grapevines (to simulate underwater roots), and some plastic plants.
3) New tenants to include: 5-6 clown loaches, four bala sharks, a couple of kuhli loaches, schools of danios, barbs, and rasboras of various sorts, and a few gouramis. (not strictly a biotope aquarium, but all fish from SE Asia/India)
I am not new to the hobby, but have been out of it for about 10 years for various reasons. I have re-aquascaped the tank, filled it, and have begun fishless cycling, as I would like to get the tank fully established and add all of the fish at once.
A week before I drained the 90 gal, I added another Aquaclear 500 to the established 55 gal community tank with just a sponge, so I could use that for seeding the 90.
I filled the tank on Monday, transferred the sponge to one of the AC500's on the 90 and added pure ammonia Monday and yesterday (10 drops/10gal).
As of today, here are my readings:
Ammonia: between 1.0 and 2.0 ppm
Nitrite: 0 ppm
Nitrates: 10 ppm
I figure the nitrates are from a bit of the sludge that remained in the bottom of the tank before refilling it. Ideally, I would have completely cleaned and emptied it, but it's too big to move around and I am a bit impatient (not a good thing in this hobby, I realize!).
Are the colonies in that sponge not well enough established to tackle the ammonia? I would have thought for sure I'd see even a bit of nitrite.
The ammonia is a pure aqueous solution (from a science teacher ), so I don't think I poisoned the little buggers with any cleanser. I didn't add any more ammonia today, since it didn't look as if any was being consumed.
I said I was impatient, but I clearly will not add any fish at all until the tank has cycled. This is my first foray into fishless cycling, but reading about cycling times of 7-12 days has me thinking that I should be seeing some nitrite.
Any thoughts?
TIA