New tank fish dying

[carey]

Oh I would totally agree. I didnt remember the exact specifics. i only use strips to break a tie LOL on my nitrate test kits. My API always says 0 and my red sea always says like 40. I use the strips to for a yes or no answer. can't wait til I go through them all. With 3 tanks it shouldnt be hard.

 

[OhNeil1969]

I'm not trying to add to any panic situation, I'm just hoping that you understand what is involved with fishless cycling Aaron. Simply running the tank for a couple of weeks without fish will not cycle a tank. You will still need to add an ammonia source to grow your bacteria colony. I recommend using pure ammonia that can be purchased at your local hardware store. You'll need a brand that doesn't have any dyes, perfumes or surfactants. The easiest way to test it is to shake the bottle: if it foams then it's NO good. If you don't want to use ammonia in a bottle then you can use flake food. As it decays it will produce ammonia. The hard part with using food, in my opinion, is that it is hard to properly dose the tank. It's recommended that you dose your tank to 4 ppm of ammonia to start out with.

After you start adding the ammonia you will need to start testing your water daily to see when that ammonia is consumed by the bacteria you've now grown in your tank. At that point you'll see a spike in nitrItes. Eventually another colony of bacteria will arrive and convert the nitrItes to nitrAtes. When that happens you will have a cycled tank. From then on all you have to do are water changes to reduce the nitrAtes.

This is a simplified version of the cycle process. For more detailed info there are a lot of posts in the Getting Started forum that can answer your questions.

Good Luck and welcome to AA!

 

[carey]

He's using fish to cycle and offsetting with filter media. It can be done. I only did it because thats what the LFS told me. On my second tank I did it different. It was alot less stressful and alot cheaper! Those nitrite and nitrate filter pads are like 16$ a pop

 

[OhNeil1969]

Ok. I'll leave it running for a couple weeks with no fish. I have a 210 gallon running and put fish in it a few days after setting it up and they're doing good. Ive been keeping fish a while and guess I thought cycling was putting fish in to cause ammonia to get the bacteria to grow and convert it to nitrates. I didn't realize you were suppose to let it cycle a while to before adding fish if you used water conditioner. Thanks.

He's using fish to cycle and offsetting with filter media. It can be done. I only did it because thats what the LFS told me. On my second tank I did it different. It was alot less stressful and alot cheaper! Those nitrite and nitrate filter pads are like 16$ a pop

I was just commenting based on the OP's post quoted above.

 

[carey]

I think we scared the op away. lol

I'm not sure of anything anymore

 

[jenatron]

OhNeil pretty much addressed my concern. +1
Also, if you do have test strips they will give you very inaccurate readings. In that case you should get a liquid test kit (like API).

 

[Aaronb]

Yeah I wasn't sure if the fish that were in there for the 10-15 hours would be enough to get the cycle started. It was a new tank but the store had a resident cat that climbed in and on everything so it was full of cat hair they cleaned out. I assumed they just cleaned it with a wet rag. I went over the inside with vinegar when I got home to clean it up. I had cycled other tanks with fish with no losses before. I guess I didn't think 4 zebra danios that were each an inch or less could cause the ammonia to build up in a 54 gallon aquarium in so few hours and die. Oh yeah I forgot to mention that some of the fish were just sitting on the bottom if that tells you anything. Thanks.

 

[Aaronb]

I just didn't want to cycle the tank if there was a different problem and I needed to tear it down and reclean everything. That's my only worry about a fishless cycle is that I'll spend the time to cycle and then the fish will die anyways because of some contamination. If you guys don't think that technically less than 10 hours is enough time for the danios to build up a toxic level of ammonia in a 54 gallon tank and die from ammonia poisoning then I'll try the fishless cycle. I do have some ammo-carb in my filter that should be taking care of some of the ammonia though.