New Tank with bacteria transferred from already established tank. When to add fish?

[IvyFangs]

Hello everyone! I was just wanting some advice.

I’ve just set up my second tank (Jewel 240L), so far it looks fantastic but i know looks can be deceiving with water quality.

Right, so with my tank, I set it up on Monday evening, I added water in before gravel (silly decision I know but I wanted the water cycling quicker) but I also took out all of my wood from my other tank to get some healthy bacteria in, as well as some plants.

For the filter sponges, I put some new ones in as well as some old ones that I had lying around (after a good clean) but I also put in some sponge from my already established tank to get the bacteria from there.

Yesterday (with 3 days of water and plants being in the tank), I put in the cleaned new gravel with a combo of half of my old gravel from the other tank, and then Tetra Active Substrate.

After this I’ve put in some Quick Start (60ml for the 240L) and I’m hoping this will get things moving even quicker.

I then put in the majority of my assassin snails to get some life in there. Last night I saw a pair going at it so I’m assuming things are probably healthy enough lol.

I’ve ordered a proper water testing kit which will come over the weekend. Whilst I’m waiting for that, I’m going to get the water tested today.

If the water comes back as safe, shall I put my 2 Amano Shrimp in tonight?

How long do you reckon I should wait before adding my fish?

 

[Aiken Drum]

The bacteria you refer to will grow and die depending on the amount of food (ammonia) available to it. So the longer you go with no ammonia going into the water the more of that microbial colony will die. What you have done to introduce those microbes won't likely be enough to consider yourself "cycled", the colony still needs to grow in the presence of ammonia sufficient to fully stock your aquarium.

So typically set everything up, fill it and run it for 24 hours to ensure there are no leaks and all the equipments works correctly. Then drain it down, scape it including transferring over anything you might be holding any of that microbial colony, and get a few fish.

As for your testing of the water before you get the fish, it wont really tell you anything useful. All it's testing is your tap water. It's going to say everything is fine if your tap water is fine. The test becomes useful when you have ammonia going into the water as it will tell you if your cycle is established because the test would then be free of ammonia and nitrite. OK, so as long as you have been feeding the snails, there might be a little bit of ammonia going in but its going to be negligible.

Personally I would treat the aquarium as though it's not cycled, and if it is, or if you have made a good headstart, thats a bonus. Either get a small number of fish and do a fish in cycle, or remove the snails and dose ammonia and do a fishless cycle. What you have should speed things up. If you get a few fish and detect no ammonia and nitrite in your testing you can more quickly add more fish than you would starting from scratch. If you dose ammonia you should find you have a headstart and your fishless cycle is quicker to establish and you can then stock your aquarium quicker than you would starting from scratch.

Personally, I've found seeding an aquarium with established filter media has meant my aquariums are cycled in a couple of weeks rather than a couple of months, but that really dependant on how much established media you can transfer.

 

[Andy Sager]

I agree with Aiken. I've found that when moving established media into a new tank, you can add fish immediately. The amount of fish you can add depends on how much established media you move over. For example, I've set up tanks where I moved over a breeding pair of Angelfish the same day I introduced a sponge filter from an established tank with no issues. However, that didn't always work when adding 50 or 100 three week old Angelfish fry. What that means is that you have to treat the tank as established for just a small amount of new life. As Aiken explained, cycling is all based on the amount of ammonia production the new life produces. When a tank "cycles" it's cycled for the amount of ammonia production there on the day it finishes cycling. That could be from1 fish, 10 fish or 100 fish or just 2 little shrimp. It just depends on how many fish or other life forms you used to cycle the tank. So this is why you add new stock in smaller amounts even when moving over established material.
On a side note, using 2 ppm of ammonium chloride ( as done with fishless cycles), you are creating a microbe bed that is typically larger than the stock you are most likely going to have in the tank will produce. This is how you can add more fish into a fishless cycled tank vs a fish in cycle. What will happen is the microbe bed will die back until it reaches a point where there are enough microbes to handle the present ammonia production.
In your case, adding just 2 amano shrimp is not going to really do much for creating a healthy large microbe bed or a large enough bed to handle a bigger load of fish at a later time. If all you plan on keeping in the tank is the shrimp, that's a different story. They should be fine.

Hope this helps.

 

[IvyFangs]

The bacteria you refer to will grow and die depending on the amount of food (ammonia) available to it. So the longer you go with no ammonia going into the water the more of that microbial colony will die. What you have done to introduce those microbes won't likely be enough to consider yourself "cycled", the colony still needs to grow in the presence of ammonia sufficient to fully stock your aquarium.

So typically set everything up, fill it and run it for 24 hours to ensure there are no leaks and all the equipments works correctly. Then drain it down, scape it including transferring over anything you might be holding any of that microbial colony, and get a few fish.

As for your testing of the water before you get the fish, it wont really tell you anything useful. All it's testing is your tap water. It's going to say everything is fine if your tap water is fine. The test becomes useful when you have ammonia going into the water as it will tell you if your cycle is established because the test would then be free of ammonia and nitrite. OK, so as long as you have been feeding the snails, there might be a little bit of ammonia going in but its going to be negligible.

Personally I would treat the aquarium as though it's not cycled, and if it is, or if you have made a good headstart, thats a bonus. Either get a small number of fish and do a fish in cycle, or remove the snails and dose ammonia and do a fishless cycle. What you have should speed things up. If you get a few fish and detect no ammonia and nitrite in your testing you can more quickly add more fish than you would starting from scratch. If you dose ammonia you should find you have a headstart and your fishless cycle is quicker to establish and you can then stock your aquarium quicker than you would starting from scratch.

Personally, I've found seeding an aquarium with established filter media has meant my aquariums are cycled in a couple of weeks rather than a couple of months, but that really dependant on how much established media you can transfer.

Just got the water tested, apparently everything is perfect but there’s LOADS of ammonia, lady at the shop recommended 25-50% water change. Is there anything else you’d recommend?

 

[Aiken Drum]

How much is "loads" of ammonia? Never accept someone just telling you words, always get the actual numbers.

What are the parameters of the aquarium water? pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate.

What are the parameters of your tap water?
 
It really comes down to what "loads" means, and where the ammonia is coming from. No point doing a water change if the ammonia is in the source water (which will be the case if your tap water is treated with chloramine). If the ammonia is 5ppm, then a 25 or 50% water change won't make much difference. If it's 0.25ppm then whoever did the test is overexaggerating the amount of ammonia.

When you add fish, you will start to see ammonia. Thats unavoidable. If you want to add fish to a completely cycled aquarium you need to conplete a fishless cycle which involves dosing ammonia.

pH is important. Ammonia simply isnt toxic in acidic pH.

 

[IvyFangs]

How much is "loads" of ammonia? Never accept someone just telling you words, always get the actual numbers.

What are the parameters of the aquarium water? pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate.

What are the parameters of your tap water?
 
It really comes down to what "loads" means, and where the ammonia is coming from. No point doing a water change if the ammonia is in the source water (which will be the case if your tap water is treated with chloramine). If the ammonia is 5ppm, then a 25 or 50% water change won't make much difference. If it's 0.25ppm then whoever did the test is overexaggerating the amount of ammonia.

When you add fish, you will start to see ammonia. Thats unavoidable. If you want to add fish to a completely cycled aquarium you need to conplete a fishless cycle which involves dosing ammonia.

pH is important. Ammonia simply isnt toxic in acidic pH.

I was at work today so my nephew and sister took a jar to get the water tested. I’ve now finished work and I’ve taken out about 35% of the water I’d say.

For loads of ammonia, it was apparently in the highest they had on the scale for the testing kit they had (it was the bottle tests not strip) all of the other parameters were perfectly fine by the person that tested the water. As for my tap water, it comes from what’s called a Bore Hole and so there’s no chemicals in it, the only issue with this is that it has a ph of around 9. I’ve treated the aquarium with ph lowering chemicals to get it to 7 which is what it was on the test at the shop.

I’ve not added the shrimp or any fish. I’m guessing that the big spike in ammonia could be from the Tetra Active Substrate. I did rinse it a LOT but maybe not enough.

Now I’ve removed the 35% water, shall I just put new clean water back in and maybe put some more of that quick start stuff in? What would you recommend?

 

[Aiken Drum]

The API liquid ammonia test has a maximum reading level of 5ppm, so if we assume it's this kit (or similar) and the test was done properly the ammonia is 5ppm or higher. A 35% water change with clean water would bring 5ppm of ammonia down to 3.25ppm. A safe level would be below 0.5ppm. To bring 5ppm down to 0.5ppm you would need to do a 90% water change.

The problem is that even if we get the ammonia to a safe level, there is no reason to assume it won't shoot back up to 5ppm tomorrow and kill everything.

So you need to look for the source of the ammonia. Start with the tap water, confirm through a test that it's ammonia free. How many assassin snails did you add?

I think its the tetra active substrate you added though. It's not a product I'm familiar with, but looked it up and it looks like a planted dirt based substrate. These substrates are notorious for releasing ammonia into the water.

What i would do is remove the dirted substrate and start over. Unless you are doing a high tech planted tank, with specialist lighting and injected CO2 you dont need it to keep the plants that do well with standard lighting and no CO2. Keep things simple.

Assuming you want to keep the substrate, I'd remove all the snails, do a 75% water change to get the ammonia down to 1 to 2ppm and complete a fishless cycle. The substrate will eventually stop leaching ammonia and your cycle will establish to consume any ammonia that does leach. Any fish, inverts you try to keep with the planted substrate will just suffer ammonia poisoning until the ammonia stops leaching and your cycle establishes. The quick start isnt going to do anything, it's not a very good product anyway and even if it worked it's not going to overcome the amount of ammonia in the water enough to allow you to add fish.

How important is the planted substrate?

Apart from rescuing the snails dont do anything until you get your own test kit. You are going to need to do lots of testing.

 

[IvyFangs]

The API liquid ammonia test has a maximum reading level of 5ppm, so if we assume it's this kit (or similar) and the test was done properly the ammonia is 5ppm or higher. A 35% water change with clean water would bring 5ppm of ammonia down to 3.25ppm. A safe level would be below 0.5ppm. To bring 5ppm down to 0.5ppm you would need to do a 90% water change.

The problem is that even if we get the ammonia to a safe level, there is no reason to assume it won't shoot back up to 5ppm tomorrow and kill everything.

So you need to look for the source of the ammonia. Start with the tap water, confirm through a test that it's ammonia free. How many assassin snails did you add?

I think its the tetra active substrate you added though. It's not a product I'm familiar with, but looked it up and it looks like a planted dirt based substrate. These substrates are notorious for releasing ammonia into the water.

What i would do is remove the dirted substrate and start over. Unless you are doing a high tech planted tank, with specialist lighting and injected CO2 you dont need it to keep the plants that do well with standard lighting and no CO2. Keep things simple.

Assuming you want to keep the substrate, I'd remove all the snails, do a 75% water change to get the ammonia down to 1 to 2ppm and complete a fishless cycle. The substrate will eventually stop leaching ammonia and your cycle will establish to consume any ammonia that does leach. Any fish, inverts you try to keep with the planted substrate will just suffer ammonia poisoning until the ammonia stops leaching and your cycle establishes. The quick start isnt going to do anything, it's not a very good product anyway and even if it worked it's not going to overcome the amount of ammonia in the water enough to allow you to add fish.

How important is the planted substrate?

Apart from rescuing the snails dont do anything until you get your own test kit. You are going to need to do lots of testing.

Oh no, not good news!! I’ll get the snails out ASAP!

For the tetra active substrate I may or may not have mixed it into the regular substrate…. I couldn’t find any brown substrate at my local fish shops and thought it would look nice and would be beneficial for the plants, big mistake agh.

I’ll do some more removing of water now then, I’m glad I didn’t fill it back up and waited for a response lol.

Water testing kit should come this weekend or early next week. Fingers crossed sooner rather than later.

Thanks so much for the advice, so frustrating with the ammonia!! I’ve never had this problem in the past with my other tank and I’d used the tetra active substrate :/

Maybe whilst it cycles it could be a good idea to get some plants established. Shall I do weekly tests for the water quality and do 25% weekly changes as I go after the initial 75%?

 

[Aiken Drum]

When you get your test kit, put a cupful of the substrate in a bucket and some clean water. Give it a day or 2, and test for ammonia. If the test shows ammonia you know it came from the substrate.

The vast majority of commonly kept plants are fine with gravel or sand substrate, standard lighting, a weekly dose of fertiliser and some root tabs around the rooted plants. The only time a dirt based substrate has benefits are high demand rooted plants, that will also require injected CO2, specialist high powered lighting and nutrient dosing regimes.

While it cycles you want to be testing every day, thats why its important to have your own kit unless its convenient to go to the fish store daily. If you are doing a fish in cycle, you need to change water as often as dictated by your test results, this may be multiple water changes per day, it may be once a week. Depends on how much ammonia your tank is producing, how far along your cycle is. If you are doing a fishless cycle you dont need to change water at all. Just monitor ammonia to ensure it doesn't drop too low, or elevate too high. You want it around 2ppm. Once you can dose 2ppm ammonia and see it cycle out to zero ammonia and nitrite in 24 hours your are cycled.

You need to make some decisions on how you want to proceed before thinking about water change schedules.

 

[IvyFangs]

Good idea with the substrate and tap water, I’ll be doing that as soon as I’ve got the test kit.

Ahhh okay, with the substrate it’s not really like pond soil but more regular gravel substrate sized clay pieces? I’m going to keep the substrate in and just battle out the ammonia with water changes and hope it kills it off, I’ve finished filling the tank back up from the 75% water change and fingers crossed it won’t need toooo much maintenance on the water changes before the ammonia gets to a regular state !

I’ll do daily tests with water changes to sort it out. I’ll do a water change on Sunday of about 50% and see how things are looking after that (should have the water testing kit by then. Once it starts to level out I’ll put the quick start in and hopefully that’ll eat up some of the remaining ammonia

For proceedings forwards im going to do semi regular water changes to cut the ammonia out and when it’s consistently at relatively low ammonia levels I’ll introduce life back in? How does that sound?

Again thank you for the super informative responses and help, it’s very very much welcome and appreciated.

 

[Aiken Drum]

Sounds like a plan. I'd wait on ammonia and nitrite being zero without the need to intervene with water changes before getting any fish etc. That could take a few weeks. Be aware that as your cycle establishes the ammonia might clear up, but be replaced with nitrite, so its not just ammonia you are needing to look for.

 

[IvyFangs]

Sounds like a plan. I'd wait on ammonia and nitrite being zero without the need to intervene with water changes before getting any fish etc. That could take a few weeks. Be aware that as your cycle establishes the ammonia might clear up, but be replaced with nitrite, so its not just ammonia you are needing to look for.

Just done another water test with the kit that came in the post.

Ammonia = between the 2.0 & 4.0 colour
Nitrate = between the 40 & 80 colour (closer to 40)
Nitrite = 0.25
PH = 7.4

I’m going to give it another couple of days and then I’ll do a 50% water change and gradually wait for things to change

 

[geraldatwork]

If you are seeing a tank then adding fish there has to be an equilibrium between the waste any fish you put in compared to the amount of bacteria you seeded. Too many fish and not enough bacteria means there will be ammonia build up which may kill those fish.
My suggestion is to put fewer fish in the seeded tank than what you think the bacteria can handle. By doing that some of the seeded bacteria may/will die. But that’s OK. Because fairly shortly you should have a well balanced cycled ( but not necessarily mature) tank. If you are certain you did that. There is no need to test for ammonia or nitrites. Just nitrate. So at that point you can slowly add more fish.