Yihuu!

[purrfect]

Nitrites are in zero! Gotta go to buy some fish today! Nitrates are only 5 ppm ? No need for water change. Maybe the sweet potato in the tank is eating that. It is getting so green and bushy. I have to get those last pieces of the dead shripm out of the tank somehow anyway, hmmm. This fishless cycling lasted over a month.

 

[TomK2]

Kudos for sticking it out!

 

[Punkymom]

ewww...does your water stink???

 

[Menagerie]

Sweet potato?

 

[purrfect]

Water does not stink. It did that for a while during the cycling. Sweet potato is half way submerged. Roots are in the water and most of the leaves in the air. It depends a bit on the water level. Nitrates were clearly above 20 ppm at one point, but now they still are at 5 ppm. I have not specifically done a water change, but I do take water for the house plants from the tank. That is about a gallon a week. Evaporation, too, is about a gallon a week. When I vacuumed the bottom, the takeout was about a gallon as well. So I need to add water to the tank about three gallons a week, which in 30 gallon tank means 10 % water change.

I bought 5 platties on Saturday. Two of them were painted ones and are already dead. Walmart had a lot of dead fish in their tanks already that day. Going to an another store in another direction would have meant one hour more driving so I tried out with these. Two golden platties, which are bigger, are very active and hungry, and I expect them to survive. One little red one is not terribly active but might survive. He has only little bit of black in his tail and might not be painted. Walmart had only few platties not painted available.