New betta keeper

MsLiia01 said:

When is the ideal time to change the water for the first time. I set up the tank last sunday.

Thank you inadvance

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carligraceee said:

When I bought my betta, I never cycled my tank. If you clean it regularly and keep Prime in it you should be fine. Cycling seems to work well for large aquariums.

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MsLiia01 said:

I have a large tank, 40LT. When would it be best, once a week? Once every fortnight?

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carligraceee said:

How many gallons is that? Sorry I am American-

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Naterjm said:

Yea, you’re going to want to read up on cycling an aquarium.

You will also want to get yourself some water testing either strips or liquid kits.

If you don’t have these, you don’t know when the ammonia, nitrite or nitrates are getting too high to stress out or kill your fish.

ammonia and nitrites are meant to be at 0ppm, otherwise you’re stressing out your fish and leaving them either susceptible to disease or infections, or straight up killing them with these toxic chemicals.

if you are getting ammonia and nitrite levels you should be doing large water changes daily to lower these until your cycle has completed and your aquarium has built up enough beneficial bacteria to break these compounds down into less harmful nitrates, and nitrates should be water changed out weekly or enough to keep them less that 20ppm.

you can use a liquid bacteria to help boost your cycle, but it’s not a quick fix.

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Naterjm said:

That’s roughly 10gal

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carligraceee said:

This is so different because I have only had bettas until recently and I have NEVER cycled their tank. I just cleaned it once a week and conditioned it well with start up bacteria as well.

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PheonixKingZ said:

Nice setup!

Have you cycled your tank yet?

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Naterjm said:

Yea, you’re going to want to read up on cycling an aquarium.

You will also want to get yourself some water testing either strips or liquid kits.

If you don’t have these, you don’t know when the ammonia, nitrite or nitrates are getting too high to stress out or kill your fish.

ammonia and nitrites are meant to be at 0ppm, otherwise you’re stressing out your fish and leaving them either susceptible to disease or infections, or straight up killing them with these toxic chemicals.

if you are getting ammonia and nitrite levels you should be doing large water changes daily to lower these until your cycle has completed and your aquarium has built up enough beneficial bacteria to break these compounds down into less harmful nitrates, and nitrates should be water changed out weekly or enough to keep them less that 20ppm.

you can use a liquid bacteria to help boost your cycle, but it’s not a quick fix.

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MsLiia01 said:

Thank you

I definitely have more research to do but this information helps me out alot l, thank you so much

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carligraceee said:

Oh, then you might want to cycle it. I was under the impression it was a normal betta tank (which is commonly around 3-5 gallons, at least the ones I have seen). So, yes. Cycle it because that is a lot of space where bad bacteria can grow. I am currently going through the same issue with my 10 galloon

Naterjm said:

If you kept them for a long period of time, you actually did cycle the tank, you probably just did it with the fish in it at the time.

the cycle refers to growing bacteria that are beneficial in breaking down harmful ammonia, nitrite into less harmful nitrates. In a nut shell.

some conditioners claim to “lock” ammonia into a less harmful form, and bottles of bacteria will help supplement the growth of a bacteria colony, but it’s not an instant fix or cycle.

mans if you weren’t testing your water along the way, there’s no way of knowing how much ammonia or nitrite they were exposed to.

I’m happy they survived, but just because they survived it, doesn’t mean they didn’t suffer through it.

The other possible benefit is that one fish would be a small bio load, so it may not have gotten too bad at any point, but at some point those fish were stressed out.

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carligraceee said:

This is so different because I have only had bettas until recently and I have NEVER cycled their tank. I just cleaned it once a week and conditioned it well with start up bacteria as well.

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