phin9009
Aquarium Advice Regular
Hey there! Thought I would start a journal for my very first aquarium, a 46 gallon bowfront. I came across a great deal on the tank, stand, Aquaclear 110 power filter, and a bunch of decorations and random accessories, so I just went for it 
After starting to research, I decided that I was going to do a fishless cycle. I got my 50 pounds of gravel, decorations, and water in the tank, and set up my filter and heater. I filled my tank with 100% RO water because my tap water is extremely hard (to the point of having calcium particles visibly floating in the water), has a pH of over 8, and contains both ammonia and nitrates. I dosed the water with API Tap Water Conditioner (just to be safe), and Seachem Replenish to replace the minerals and buffers that are not present in the RO water. I set the temp to 84, turned my filter up to high and hooked up my air pump to a bubbler (one of my decorations has an airstone on it and I like the look of the bubbles coming from it, so I figured a little extra aeration couldn't hurt). Dosed my tank to 4 ppm ammonia using Ace Brand Janitorial Ammonia using my handy dandy API Freshwater Master Test Kit (little did I know how well aquainted I was going to get with that kit...), and let the tank sit for 3 days before testing again. When I finally tested, my ammonia showed 2 ppm. I thought this was awesome, because it meant bacteria were eating the ammonia! Yay! (I now think that maybe I hadn't given the tank enough time to circulate the ammonia the first day.) Unfortunately there were no nitrites or nitrates, and the ammonia level didn't drop past 1.5 for over 2 weeks, at which point I seeded the tank with lava rocks, filter floss, and, (when neither of those had any effect) sponge filter mud from established tanks and re-dosed the tank to 4 ppm ammonia. It finally started showing a little progress following the addition of the sponge filter mud, with the ammonia visibly dropping. However nitrites still hadn't shown up! On a whim, having read other threads where people had missed a nitrite spike when they seeded their tank, I tested for nitrates when my ammonia had dropped to around 2 ppm. AND THERE THEY WERE! I had around 5 ppm nitrates! That was 6 days ago, and my ammonia has been steadily dropping and nitrates are rising.
Here we are, 6 weeks after I started my fishless cycle, and my tank is still sitting there empty, but at least now it is showing visible progress. When I tested my tank tonight, my ammonia was down to between 0 and 0.25 and my nitrates were up to between 20 and 40 ppm (closer to 40 ppm). Hoping the ammonia drops to 0 tomorrow so I can re-dose it up to 2 and see how long it takes for that to disappear. With any luck (which I haven't had much of so far -_-) I will be doing a large water change and shopping for the first set of my stocking list soon!
My planned stocking list is 1 angelfish, 4 African dwarf frogs (which I will be keeping a close eye on to make sure they can make it to the surface, if they seem to have ANY trouble at all, I will be moving them to a spare tank I have on hand-I have both a 10 gallon and a 20 gallon on hand; they'd pry get the 20 gallon haha), 3 sunset platies, 3 blue platies, 3 dalmation mollies, 9 cherry barbs, 9 harlequin rasboras, and 1 German Blue Ram (which will be added in a few months when the tank is well established).
The tank is decorated with 50 pounds of gravel, an awesome ship wreck, a scuba diver (both of those bubble), and some fake plants (didn't feel confident enough to do a planted tank right away-maybe in the future!). Marinland Eclipse 36 inch F30T8 bulb.
In my filter, I have the aquaclear foam insert, 2 bags of biomax media, some lava rocks from a lfs, and tons of filter floss. I am currently toying with the idea of getting a sponge filter to run in the tank as well, mostly to have a cycled filter to put in a tank as needed, whether that's a QT tank (sterilizing after the QT of course) or to seed my next tank (because multiple tank syndrome is already starting!)
After starting to research, I decided that I was going to do a fishless cycle. I got my 50 pounds of gravel, decorations, and water in the tank, and set up my filter and heater. I filled my tank with 100% RO water because my tap water is extremely hard (to the point of having calcium particles visibly floating in the water), has a pH of over 8, and contains both ammonia and nitrates. I dosed the water with API Tap Water Conditioner (just to be safe), and Seachem Replenish to replace the minerals and buffers that are not present in the RO water. I set the temp to 84, turned my filter up to high and hooked up my air pump to a bubbler (one of my decorations has an airstone on it and I like the look of the bubbles coming from it, so I figured a little extra aeration couldn't hurt). Dosed my tank to 4 ppm ammonia using Ace Brand Janitorial Ammonia using my handy dandy API Freshwater Master Test Kit (little did I know how well aquainted I was going to get with that kit...), and let the tank sit for 3 days before testing again. When I finally tested, my ammonia showed 2 ppm. I thought this was awesome, because it meant bacteria were eating the ammonia! Yay! (I now think that maybe I hadn't given the tank enough time to circulate the ammonia the first day.) Unfortunately there were no nitrites or nitrates, and the ammonia level didn't drop past 1.5 for over 2 weeks, at which point I seeded the tank with lava rocks, filter floss, and, (when neither of those had any effect) sponge filter mud from established tanks and re-dosed the tank to 4 ppm ammonia. It finally started showing a little progress following the addition of the sponge filter mud, with the ammonia visibly dropping. However nitrites still hadn't shown up! On a whim, having read other threads where people had missed a nitrite spike when they seeded their tank, I tested for nitrates when my ammonia had dropped to around 2 ppm. AND THERE THEY WERE! I had around 5 ppm nitrates! That was 6 days ago, and my ammonia has been steadily dropping and nitrates are rising.
Here we are, 6 weeks after I started my fishless cycle, and my tank is still sitting there empty, but at least now it is showing visible progress. When I tested my tank tonight, my ammonia was down to between 0 and 0.25 and my nitrates were up to between 20 and 40 ppm (closer to 40 ppm). Hoping the ammonia drops to 0 tomorrow so I can re-dose it up to 2 and see how long it takes for that to disappear. With any luck (which I haven't had much of so far -_-) I will be doing a large water change and shopping for the first set of my stocking list soon!
My planned stocking list is 1 angelfish, 4 African dwarf frogs (which I will be keeping a close eye on to make sure they can make it to the surface, if they seem to have ANY trouble at all, I will be moving them to a spare tank I have on hand-I have both a 10 gallon and a 20 gallon on hand; they'd pry get the 20 gallon haha), 3 sunset platies, 3 blue platies, 3 dalmation mollies, 9 cherry barbs, 9 harlequin rasboras, and 1 German Blue Ram (which will be added in a few months when the tank is well established).
The tank is decorated with 50 pounds of gravel, an awesome ship wreck, a scuba diver (both of those bubble), and some fake plants (didn't feel confident enough to do a planted tank right away-maybe in the future!). Marinland Eclipse 36 inch F30T8 bulb.
In my filter, I have the aquaclear foam insert, 2 bags of biomax media, some lava rocks from a lfs, and tons of filter floss. I am currently toying with the idea of getting a sponge filter to run in the tank as well, mostly to have a cycled filter to put in a tank as needed, whether that's a QT tank (sterilizing after the QT of course) or to seed my next tank (because multiple tank syndrome is already starting!)
