As the title suggests, we went to the petshop came home with a tank and a few days later we added guppies, mollies and tetras. Seemingly all was good until it wasn’t, we were overfeeding and had the light on about 15 hours a day. We lost 2 x bleeding heart Molly’s within a couple of days. Algae started popping up and we took some water into an aquarium shop. We had sky high ammonia as the main issue. Also found out the plants we were recommended weren’t aquarium, they were bog plants so they were trying to head to the surface and the leaves were kind of melting.
We removed ornaments and the bog plants, just leaving a small piece of driftwood and some small dense aquarium plants as we have babies and they need some cover.
We are now several weeks down the track of tank cycling and have lost a couple more Mollys along the way, although they were balloon mollys (I should have read up on those too before buying). At the weekend we still had high nitrites but no ammonia so we did a 50% water change. Currently we have no ammonia, no nitrites and climbing nitrates.
I would just like to know how frequently we should be testing the water now and when we know that the tank has officially cycled.
Thank you for the wealth of knowledge in this group and I will not trust pet store staff again.
We removed ornaments and the bog plants, just leaving a small piece of driftwood and some small dense aquarium plants as we have babies and they need some cover.
We are now several weeks down the track of tank cycling and have lost a couple more Mollys along the way, although they were balloon mollys (I should have read up on those too before buying). At the weekend we still had high nitrites but no ammonia so we did a 50% water change. Currently we have no ammonia, no nitrites and climbing nitrates.
I would just like to know how frequently we should be testing the water now and when we know that the tank has officially cycled.
Thank you for the wealth of knowledge in this group and I will not trust pet store staff again.