Thats helped a lot, thanks a lot!
I am going to buy the water tests anyway, and I think im going to get the Elite Mini filter in the week.
Do the filters help get rid of the ammonia and nitrites as well?
Thanks!
Can anyone clear that up? And does anyone know if the Elite Mini is any good?
By the way, what exactly do the filters clear out?
Cheers!
There is a beneficial bacteria that lives in the filters sponges which breaks down ammonia into nitrites and then into nitrates. Filters suck up muck from the tank (which provides the bacteria with the food/ammonia source it needs to survive) and supplies the bacteria with oxygen via flowing water and surfaces to live on (usually a sponge).
Ammonia and nitrites are both toxic to fish, but the bacteria converts these into nitrates (only harmful in excessive levels, but are generally harmless), the process of the bacteria growing in the filter is called cycling as when you buy a new filter it will have none of this beneficial bacteria, so you have to start a new colony from scratch which can take quite some time before it is fully established (the bacteria will move in on its own accord once the filter is running and you have an ammonia source in the tank for it to survive off), and the process of the bacteria converting the ammonia into nitrites into nitrates is called the Nitrogen Cycle
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The bacteria cannot survive without ammonia or oxygen so you must have the filter constantly switched on and have something in the tank to provide the bacteria with an ammonia source to survive (which is usually fish as they are always pooping and peeing out ammonia).
When the tank has finished cycling, you should never have any ammonia or nitrites in the tank and a relatively small to medium reading of nitrates, which are the end product of the nitrogen cycle. The 0 nitrites and ammonia indicates that the beneficial bacteria is handling the ammonia in the tank very well (which is what you should aim for), if there is an ammonia or nitrite reading in the tank then that means that the beneficial bacteria cannot cope with the bioload of the tank for various reasons. How many nitrates you may have varies a lot on average, nitrates make a good fertiliser for plants and in heavily planted tanks with lots of healthy plants you may see 0 nitrates as the plants are constantly absorbing them. Personally i usually have around 20 nitrates in my tanks- most people aim to have their nitrates between 1 and 40 but no more, in very high levels they can be bad for fish.
Establishing the beneficical bacteria in your tank is very important, as otherwise toxins like ammonia will just build up and kill off your fish or make then very ill. Some fish are tougher than others, some fish are particularly sensitive to the water quality of a tank and will die off at the slightest sign of ammonia or nitrites (which is why some fish are not recommend for new tank set ups which may be cycling), but ultimately all fish deserve good water quality regardless of how hardy they are. Keeping your water quality good will result in healthier, happier and longer lived fish- often one of the no.1 causes of desease in fish is due to poor water quality conditions, as fish become stressed when kept in poor water quality, and when they are stressed their imune systems become less effective at fighting off desease (kinda like us really, if you are really stressed in your day to day life, you are more likely to get ill).
In a tank without decent filtration, you will need to do 100% water changes every day as this is the only way to prevent ammonia and nitrite levels rising above 0 otherwise.
Filters also have other benefets other than just growing beneficical bacteria in- they help keep the tank visably cleaner, and they help oxygenate the water, and the strength of the water current in a tank is very important to many fish. For example, some fish which in the wild come from ponds and slow moving rivers (like gourami's and bettas), prefer a slow filter current in tanks, while other fish like danios and hillstream loaches primarily come from fast flowing and thus highly oxygenated streams in the wild, and so prefer a strong filter current in their tanks if they are to get the oxygen and excercise they need etc
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edit: You need to dechlorinate your water with water conditioner which removes chlorine and heavy metals from tap water, as tap water contains chlorine (and often various heavy metals) to kill off bacteria/deseases in the water. This chlorine in the tap water is great for us so we are not always getting sick drinking tap water, but the chlorine is very bad for the beneficial bacteria in fish tanks and will kill it off, causing the tank to always be stuck in a never ending state of cycling.
So you need to treat any water you put in the tanks to remove the chlorine from the water, and also never clean the filter out in untreated tap water (only clean it out in old water left over from water changes). The chlorine and heavy metals often found in tap water are also bad for fish in the long term too, which is another reason why to treat the water in your tanks.
When your tank is cycling with fish, you should do a small water change (like 20-30%) whenever you see ammonia or nitrites to help keep the levels to 0. This will mean that the tank will take longer to cycle, but will also mean that the fish will have a much higher chance of getting through the cycle with no health problems from the stress of the unstable water quality.
A lot of people do "fishless cycling" now days to establish the beneficical bacteria in their tanks as it takes less time to do and does not risk the fishes good health at all- the concept of fishless cycle is to basically flood the tank with pure ammonia while the tank has no fish in it. Really excessive levels of ammonia can be put into the tank because there are no fish in the tank to worry about, and this means that the tank can be cycled a lot quicker.
There are loads of pinned articles on stuff like this in places like the Beginner section of the forum if you want to know more on stuff like this
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