Beginner's Advice Please

[newfin]

This is my first post. I'm grateful for all the advice I have already used from reading this forum.

I set up a 200litre tropical tank about a month ago. After cycling the tank and monitoring water levels I have added 6 leopard danios whidh all seem healthy and happy, and then yesterday 4 Schwartzi corys and 4 Punctatus corys. The Schwartzis are taking a little time to settle - they are swimming up and down the glass (not breaching the surface for air), I moved the spraybar to agitate the water a little more as a precaution. I presume they will settle as long as I continue to monitor the water?

My main concern is water monitoring. I have been using a tablet test kit which I find easy to use. My nitrite and ammonia levels have always been at 0.1mg/l (not zero). pH 7.5. Nitrate ranges from 10 to 25mg/l. I have been adding filter start every other day according to manufacturer's instructions. I performed a 25% water change and filter clean last weekend.

Do I continue with the filter start regime while I am gradually adding fish? And do I perform regular water changes to reduce the ammonia and nitrite to zero and reduce the nitrate? If so, then how often should I do this? I was planning on once a week for a 25% change unless water levels rose dangerously in the meantime.

Sorry if this is longwinded,

 

[Miss Wiggle]

don't worry about being longwinded, my reply will probably be just as bad if not worse!!

firstly welcome to the forum, sit down, have a cup of tea and make yourself at home

Cories are lively little fish and will swim almost frantically up and down the glass anyway so their behaviour does not sound like cause for concern to me. Just a word for the future, at some point you should get another 2 of each species of cory, they do better in a larger group and really need a group of 6 as a minimum. It's fine for now but when the tank has stabilised you should try to find a couple more of each.

Unfortunately what you are going through now is a fish-in cycle, it sounds like you've done some research and have some of the basics covered, but have a read of the link in my sig 'whats cycling' which explains the whole process and what to do in your situation. You may find it tells you something you didn't know.

I'm not sure how good the tablet test kits are, I've seen there before but not used one myself, generally we recommend liquid based test kits as they are the most accurate so you may want to think about getting yourself one. I recommend the API Fresh water master test kit, you can usually pick it up from ebay for about £15/20 so it's not a major expenditure. I'll await comment from someone with experience of these test kits to see how accurate it is.

The filter start will be doing nothing I'm afraid, these bacteria in a bottle products are nearly all useless, there's two reasons for this

1 - a lot of them contain the wrong species of bacteria in the first place (not a good start!)

2 - bacteria is a living thing, it can't live forever in a bottle on a dusty shelf in a fish shop with no food source

there are two products available which have received some good feedback they are Bio Spira (USA) and Bactinettes (UK) these are both stored refridgerated and both have a shelf life, which means there is a significantly better chance of any of the bacteria still being alive when you put it into the tank. Even with these though results are mixed. You may as wel bin the filter start tbh, it won't be doing anything except adding a small amount of ammonia from the dead bacteria.

For now your main priority is to keep ammonia and nitrite at 0, this is best achieved with regular water changes, you should be doing water changes every day at the moment to keep the levels as low as possible, do more than one change a day if needs be. I would start out doing 30% changes daily, if you find this isn't enough to keep the levels down then increase the volume of changes, best to not go much above 60/70% of the tank's water in one change (it's possible but there's things that can go wrong so as a beginner make it easy on yourself and stick around that level). If those changes are not keeping the levels down then do a big change, wait for 1 hr and then do another. Basically change out as much as needs be to keep levels down.

After a few weeks the levels will naturally stay lower and you can do less water changes, eventually easing into a normal routine of one 30% change a week.

Can you also explain how you cleaned the filter, you shouldn't really be doing this at the moment unless the flow rate drops significantly. You're trying to grow filter bacteria, everytime you clean the filter you will loose some of the bacteria, when the tank is mature it can take it but for now you should keep filter cleaning to a minimum.

As for adding more fish, you need to wait until ammonia and nitrite are both steady at 0, then wait around 2 weeks before adding any more fish, from there if you only add a couple of fish at a time then you shouldn't have a cycle like this and have to go through all the daily water changes. At worst you';ll get a mini cycle and have to do water changes for 2/3 days.

 

[newfin]

Thanks so much for this information. I'll put it into practice.
BTW when i cleaned the filter i removed the impeller and used a damp cloth (just for the tank) with tank water to remove any sludge in the filter baskets. From reading the forum I realise this has probably done more harm than good so I will leave the filter well alone! (until I notice a reduction in flow rate). Thanks for letting me know about filter start. It's hard being a beginner!

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Thanks so much for this information. I'll put it into practice.
BTW when i cleaned the filter i removed the impeller and used a damp cloth (just for the tank) with tank water to remove any sludge in the filter baskets. From reading the forum I realise this has probably done more harm than good so I will leave the filter well alone! (until I notice a reduction in flow rate). Thanks for letting me know about filter start. It's hard being a beginner!

it sure is! but you're in the right place now and we'll give you all the help you need so just ask away.

 

[newfin]

Just to let you know, I got hold of an API liquid test kit and in comparison to the tablet one I was using (Interpret Easy Test)it is MUCH more accurate. I had been recommended tablet test kits by an aquarium shop, but just goes to show the importance of trying these things for yourself. Did a 25% water change yesterday, readings today (using liquid test kit) are:
Ammonia 0.25ppm
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 10ppm
pH - using high pH test kit was 8.0 so may need to reduce this in future, previous tablet test was pH 7.5.

Sought further advice from an aquarium shop where I purchased the API kit today re filter bacteria (of note, a different shop to the tablet kings!). They had either bactinettes as you suggested or JBL filter bacteria which they said had performed better from feedback they had received, so I've tried the latter to restore the damage I had done by cleaning too soon . I'll repeat my tests tomorrow morning and do a water change then depending, giving the filter chance to settle down too.

BTW Corys all doing well and seem to be settling.

Many thanks again, you have been so reassuring.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

what test reading did you get with the normal range pH test kit from API?

Well everyone has different experiences, give the JBL stuff a try and if it works then great! If it doesn't then at least you know somewhere that stocks the Bactinettes and can pick some up to try afterwards.

Keep doing the water changes to keep the ammonia down, 0.25ppm is not safe and is the absolute max you should let it get too.

 

[newfin]

Normal pH test reading was at 7.6 hence I did both out of interest.

After a 40litre water change this morning and having read your reply I retested the NH3 just now.
I wasn't certain whether it was zero or 0.25ppm (big difference in fish health as we know!) so i tested a vial of tap water too and both were exactly the same. I therefore think I'm at zero now - phew! and was perhaps being overly cautious and hypnotising myself by looking at the colour charts too long
Unless of course we are all drinking ammonia in the tap water where I live - hmm might explain a few things
I'll continue daily tests for now anyway until all is stable.

Many thanks

 

[jnms]

Normal pH test reading was at 7.6 hence I did both out of interest.

After a 40litre water change this morning and having read your reply I retested the NH3 just now.
I wasn't certain whether it was zero or 0.25ppm (big difference in fish health as we know!) so i tested a vial of tap water too and both were exactly the same. I therefore think I'm at zero now - phew! and was perhaps being overly cautious and hypnotising myself by looking at the colour charts too long
Unless of course we are all drinking ammonia in the tap water where I live - hmm might explain a few things
I'll continue daily tests for now anyway until all is stable.

Many thanks

Gonna make you paranoid now - but our tap water has 0.6ppm ammonia...

 

[Mauricia]

Wait, did I miss something? She said she cycled the tank and then added fish, so she's not doing a fish in cycle right?

 

[LauraFrog]

I don't think the tank quite cycled properly before the fish went in because there is still an ammonia reading.

Sometimes it is impossible to zero the nitrite before fish are added; I know of fishless cycled tanks where the ammonia has zeroed, but after doing everything imaginable the nitrite stays at 0.25 for as much as eight or ten weeks. The next time it happened that person just added fish anyway - as soon as there were a few fish in the tank everything settled.

Be careful with the liquid ammonia test if one of the reagents is phenol (third bottle usually). It is extremely photosensitive (damaged by light). I left it out on a shelf - this is sealed thick opaque bottle - and totally stuffed it so it comes up with wildly inaccurate readings.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

cycling is a case of supply and demand, the tank is considered cycled when the rate of ammonia consumption is equal to the rate of ammonia production. i.e. the bacteria can eat up all the ammonia produced by the fish.

now weather the tank was cycled fishlessly before adding the danio's or not, after a week of just having 6 danio's in the bacteria will have died off to a point where they can only cope with the waste produced from 6 danios. If you then add 8 cories you're probabl doubling the bio load i.e. the ammonia produced in the tank. The bacteria will then not be able to cope with this and you have to go through a period of cycling while it catches up and is cycled again.

When you've cycled fishlessly you do it with 5ppm of ammonia to make sure that the bacteria can consume a full tank's worth of ammonia, then you can stock fully or nearly fully and you don't have to go through any more cycles when you add more fish. if you just add a small amount of fish after the fishless cycle then the bacteria will die off and you have to re-grow them.

In a mature tank this doesn't take too long and at most you get a mini cycle lasting a day or two, but in an immature tank the bacteria can't reproduce so quickly and this can take a couple of weeks.

Hope that clarifies.

 

[jnms]

Out of interest Miss Wiggle and because this is of interest to me...how long would you leave between stocking fish. For example, I would want to add say four platties and a bristlenose into my tank once it is cycled. Due to finances it would then be a while before I could add anything else. Next up I would want 12 phantom tetras, and some guppies or gouramis. What sort of timescale should these be added over, and how many in at a time?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

the longer you can leave it the better basically

a mature filter bacteria colony can double in 24 hrs, a new bacteria colony may take a few weeks, so once the tank is cycled if you were to add more fish as soon as the levels stabilise it would start to cycle again if you added more than a couple of fish. However if you left it several weeks the chances of a cycle would be greatly reduced. Basically it's best to leave it as long as possible and add just a few fish then leave it as long as you can bear again etc until the tank is full.

so basically once the cycle is done, if you can cope leaving it maybe a month before doing anything else, then just add either the platies or the BN's, then leave it another month and add whichever you didn't get the first time, then another couple of weeks then add half the serpae's, then another couple of weeks and add the rest of them. It's possible that you'd still have some mini cycle, but doing it like this you minimise the chances of it.

 

[OldMan47]

I would look at it this way jnms, the bacteria you have established have the ability to process just so much ammonia. Any more than that will start a buildup. If it is a small slow buildup, the bacteria will catch up and remove it all at the new production rate. To prevent a large ammonia buildup, add only a small percentage of what load you already have. Compared to 4 platies and a BNP, the phantoms would be too much to add all at once. You might be able to add them 3 or 4 at a time if you spaced it out a week between additions. When the tank was stable after the phantoms were added, your bioload would have probably have doubled so you could afford to add a little faster in the next step. Maybe you could add 6 guppies all at once. As MW said, you can't really expect a new filter to respond as quickly as a mature colony would so space things out and use only a fraction of what you already have for the next addition.

 

[jnms]

Thanks Miss Wiggle and OldMan47, that is good information indeed. I will see how long I can wait at the end of the cycle - I may have patience to stretch it a week or two... After that I will do as you guys advise and add only a few fish at a time, with a gap of a few weeks or even a month.

One other question, if I buy the tetras in small groups would each group eventually join together into one single shoal?