Established Media Setup In New Tank

Picture Of Filter Setup - http/mpchester.com/filter.jpg

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Tank Specs:
29 Gallon
3 fish (2 tetra's, 1 danio zebra)
(Last 3 days Recorded with a master kit)
Amonia = between .25 and .5
Nitrite = 0
Nitrate = 0
pH = 7.8 (that's what my drinking water is, and i was told to leave it and the fish will adapt instead of constantly treating it)
15% Water Changes Every other day treated with Aqueon Water Conditioner ( i was told that it doesn't effect the bacteria since most is not in the water but in the gravel and filter )
Tank Temp = 78*
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My tank has been running for 8 days. I put fish in there day 2 ( i wish i did a fishless cycle but didn't learn about it until after). The water got pretty cloudy even though i did daily water changes. I then put in an established filter (day 4) and the cloudyness cleared up within a day. I was told that with the established media that the cycle should speed up, and possibly would take as little as 48 hours.

Is my filter not setup correctly?

The only reason i am asking is because from the readings i have, it looks like it is still in stage 1 of the 3 part cycle and it's been a week. I don't mind waiting, i know doing it without an established filter it should take 2 weeks per part of the cycle.

Once fish are in there you just have to let go and mentally change over to the fact that you are in a fish-in cycling situation and learn the skills involved in that. The use of mature media is great and may speed up any kind of cycle, fishless or fish-in, but you just put it in and then still follow the rules of the particular type of cycling (the rules should be understandable in our Fish-In cycling article by rabbut in the Beginners Resource Center -- take a read of that and come back with questions.

You are in an urgent situation of course (the ammonia has gone above the 0.25ppm limit and you had some .5ppm showing) so much larger water changes are in order. You should take care of this before trying to read and understand the goals of fish-in cycling and how to conduct it.

~~waterdrop~~

Hi Chester,

Welcome to the forum! Sorry it is under urgent circumstances.

As WD said, you have important stuff to do at the moment (water changes and study up on fish-in cycle), however, I wanted to make a couple of comments regarding your filter, FOR LATER, when you have some time to evaluate it.

It appears you have an Aqueon Power Filter, which is what I have on my tank (I also run a much larger Fluval 205 canister, but am still using the Aqueon at the same time).

The carbon filter that you installed is not really needed unless you are dealing with cleaning out some medicine or other chemicals that are in the water for some reason. The majority opinion on this forum seems to be that carbon is not needed in a normal tank situation. I found that I was replacing the carbon filter monthly, (because it would clog and the water would flow over the side chamber, right around it) and I was most likely throwing out some useful bacteria that had grown on the filter itself.

So based on a couple of suggestions from the forum, I purchased some plastic scrubbing pads like you wash dishes with. Not metal - just plastic - and no soap or any chemicals on them. I actually found a pair of pads that have a ring of sponge built into the middle - even better for growing bacteria! So here is a picture - you can see the top of one pad, and the other is completely submerged under the top one:



If this is your only source of filtration, you might want to find a sponge or something that more completely fills the blue basket to make sure you're filtering out the waste material. Since I have a second filter, I mainly wanted to set this one up for bacteria production.

Let me know if you have any questions. WD will chime in if I got off course here - I'm still new at this stuff.

Greenville Guy

Sounds good, nice pic! WD

Thank you guys for your help. WD, i read the in-fish cycling article and a few more in the beginner section. I do have one question though that i didn't see covered anywhere. If i am doing in-fish cycling, how many fish do i need to have to get enough amonia / nitrate / nitrite's to grow the bacteria at a steady pace. (29 gallon tank). I started off with 4, and sadly am down to 2 (1 serea tetra 1 danio zebra fish). Now that i have an amonia test kit i can keep that under control. Whenever i went to the LFS they said that my levels were doing just great. Is 2 enough? Or should i get 1 more danio zebra fish?

ALSO a question on the spunge filter idea. Should wait until i finish cycling before i change out that filter? I am afraid of starting the cycle over or slowing it down.

mpchester said:

ALSO a question on the spunge filter idea. Should wait until i finish cycling before i change out that filter? I am afraid of starting the cycle over or slowing it down.

Click to expand...

That's a tough call. Aqueon designed that filter saying that the bacteria will be on the blue frame, and the blue part where the water falls out of the filter. This is probably true, but I imagine that bacteria would also colonize the fabric of the carbon filter, too. You'll end up having to swap it eventually, since it will saturate and the water will start bypassing it. This happened to me after 4 weeks. I read where some forum members simply slit open the filter, got rid of the carbon part, and then kept the white mesh part in the filter. If you did the same thing, you could probably rig it so that you keep the empty mesh next to the holder and also install a sponge-type media in the holder.

Excellent suggestion from GVG and yes I agree its a tough call. Those two little fish in a big 29G are going to have a lot of water to dilute the ammonia. You don't actually need to worry about the -amount- of ammonia for the bacteria per se in a fish in cycle as even tiny amounts of ammonia will gradually result in bacterial colonies. The name of the game entirely is keeping the fish within that narrow band between zero ppm and 0.25ppm of ammonia and/or nitrite concentration. Varying the number of fish then has an effect on how large and how frequent your water changes end up being.

So the question is, how ready and dedicated are you to the water changes? If you've got that down to a science, then there might be some argument for adding slightly (usually this is heresy, so take this with a grain of salt, lol) to the stock. I'm thinking that the aim is to save the two fish and each of those types of fish do really like to be among larger numbers of their own species, so even an addition of one or two more of each type might make the difference in their living, assuming you could change enough water to keep them in the narrow band where the poisons won't over-stress them. But first it would be best to do the filter media change if we're going to do that and to let things settle down and feel that your daily test result log is making some sense. Only when that's all stable and you are on a steady water changing patter should you consider possibly adding a few fish to the fish-in cycle and really, we may all end up feeling you shouldn't add any at all, that's the usual base rule.

~~waterdrop~~

I am definitely committed and want these little guys to be happy. The last few days i have been doing daily water changes of about 20 - 25% using a thermometer to make sure the temperature is within a degree of the fish tank water. My first post was actually a re-post of what i put on yahoo answers under the fish section twice where i got terrible responses. Anyways whenever i have washed dishes i have used regular sponges so i am afraid i have no idea what Gvilleguy's plastic scrubbing pads look like as a whole. Although i have an idea with his top view picture. Is this what i am looking for?



(the image isn't showing up for me so just incase i did it wrong here is a direct link http/img2.photographersdirect.com/img/19309/wm/pd1660214.jpg )

I know i want plastic and nothing with metal but is there anything else i should be looking for? Is it still okay to get if it doesn't have a ring of sponge in the middle?

Thanks in advanced, you guys have been really helpful.

Yes, that's the type of scrubbing pad I was recommending. They don't have to have sponge in the middle - when I went to buy mine I just happened to find these with the sponge core and thought it would work well.

I also use the scrubbing pads in my filters. This picture shows some in one of my externals.


Something you do not want to forget about using a scrubber is that it is only a biological filter. It does nothing to clean the particles out of the water. In that picture you can see 2 other baskets that my water goes through before reaching the scrubbers. Those other baskets are full of other media to deal with all of the things in a fish tank, not just biologicals.

For a filter like the one in the picture, I do indeed remove the carbon from the filter bag and keep the bag for its biological properties and its mechanical filtration qualities. Mine look like this when new on my desk top. they are made in a way that allows me to simply dump out the carbon. I do have older filters of that type that I have had to cut open to remove the carbon but it is the bag that gets dirty enough to restrict flow, not the carbon.

Good pics, OM!

Alright i think i got it!



[ www.mpchester.com/filter2.jpg ] Just in case the picture doesn't show up.

So 2 things that i need to do - after it cycles.

-Get that mature media OUT OF THERE!!! Being that it has been almost 2 weeks since i started this project (1 1/2 with the "mature" media) i think the bacteria didn't make the ride home or something? I got it from a pet store and maybe they just changed filters or something? i dunno but i still am not getting any reading for nitrites.

-Cut out the carbon from the aqueon filter.

These 2 things i want to do AFTER .. or at least after the aquaclear gets some bacteria on it.

I bought 3 all plastic - no chemicals added scrubbers and put them vertically in the aquaclear. (although they are kinda squished together in there, do they need more room? water does go through them.) It is only for a 20 gallon tank BUT i figure just to do the bacteria and not the filtering it should be fine since it does 100G/H.

Any suggestions? Comments? Am i finally in business?

(apologies but I'm going to skip any comments on the media and filter temporarily and leave that to GVG and OM47 to analyze and maybe I'll get a chance later to resolve the links and add comments)

But on the Fish-In Cycle itself.. remember, a fish-in cycle often takes more than a month, maybe two, and often doesn't give you a lot of feed-back about how well its proceeding. Because you are doing whatever frequency and percentage of water changes are needed to keep the fish alive, the ammonia and nitrite results feedback is poor, often very diluted by your water changes and sometimes confusing, especially if the bioload is small compared to the tank and filtration system that's going.

Still, the very way that you know to keep going is that ammonia and nitrite will indeed creep in to the picture and until that stops happening then the fish-in cycle is still in progress.

~~waterdrop~~

If you have wedged the scrubbers tightly into the filter, I would remove one to make a nice snug, not tight, fit. Mature media can be left indefinitely in a new filter. Do not be in a hurry to remove it. The fish stocking we used to use before anyone understood fishless was to add from 10% to 20% of a full stocking and use that as the first stock for a fish-in cycle. Anything much smaller than about 10% will work very slowly to build the bacterial colony and of course will only cycle you to less than 10% of the desired final fish biological load. Over 20% means that you are doing daily water changes and having a hard time staying on top of things.

Somewhere along this thread I missed where you added a 2nd filter!