I sympathize with you Lioness, it can be really hard not to get sucked into the parent thing of feeling like you are the one who is supposed to deliver the fun, colorful fish to the kids. I admit that its been tough for me too. My kid is not the nerdy type (whoops, scientifically inquisitive we should say) and has already memorized the details of the nitrogen cycle and doesn't really want to hear more about it! One of the strongest things that helps parents stay on course though is just thinking about how much less fun it would be to find yourself explaining why the fish died and then fishing out the bodies with a net.
I'm trying to think of the little things that have made things a tiny bit better for my son during fishless cycling... I got pretty big airstones and have them sending up big walls of bubbles in his tank. With the light on this at least lends an active feel to the tank and can look pretty when you are walking by. The notebook we use for our detailed daily log was found by him and has a cover with 3D holograms of fishes! He can do the tests with the testtubes and even if I do them I -always- try to let him "call it", which is when I ask him to match the test colors.
Another thing is to take along a little notebook to the closest fish stores and figure out how many tanks hold fishes that will grow too big for our tank and how many hold fishes that won't grow too big (at the PetSmart I was surprised that fully half or more would grow too big!)
Yet another idea that we've used was to investigate whether any really good fish stores were in drivable distance. We in fact found a couple and drove to one in a distant city and he got to take his time enjoying a large goldfish pond they had and hundreds of tanks. We picked out a ship decoration that is now in the tank.
Looking back at your thread it looks like barely underway, really only starting a couple days ago on Monday when you corrected the problem of the ammonia being too high. I would go ahead and take "rdd1952"s advice - he is our fishless teacher here - can really write clear advice. Check that pH and post it up here. It might be the problem - it was my problem I think, mine was dropping too low, but water changes helped.
Anyway, 3 kids may keep you too busy to read this but if you do get the chance I hope it might help a little.
Sincerely, ~~waterdrop~~
Thank you so much for the ideas on how to help the kiddos pass the time. Your right, better they suffer with an empty tank than with a pet burial.
I was looking up bacteria bloom and ...I dont think thats what this is. Its cloudy but not cloudy like THAT milky white kinda cloudy. More cloudy as in just not crystal clear. Do you all think I still need to be worrying about bacteria bloom? Also while I was looking into the tank I noticed that I have TONS of itty bitty bubbles zipping around the tank...presumably from the bubble wall I have in there. Is this normal and okay?
