Forced Into Fish In Cycle Due To Not Much Research And Bad Advice From

[westtra]

We'll going by what I've been reading took some bad advice from pets at home where we impulse bought a marina all in one 60l tank set up and on thier advice stuck some fish in after a few days. 5 guppies and 4 platys.

3 of the platys died and 1 guppy after about 2 weeks. Skip forward a few more weeks and a betta(white around the mouth, loss of colour and a horse shoe shape on back LFS thinks neon terta disease going by pics i showed them) and 3 out of 6 cardinals dead and found this forum and advice from a tropical fish store we have changed the filter that came with the tank(marina slim filter) with a ehiem 60L internal power filter.

Have been fish in cycling for over 6 weeks now and have hardly seen 0ppm on ammonia normally sits at 0.25.

Tank stats today which have been pretty steady for last few weeks apart from a nitrite spike due to it not getting a change for a little over a week.

Using API master kit.

PH low >7.6
PH high 8.0
Ammonia 0.25ppm
No2 0ppm
No3 20 - 40ppm

Also did a full sweep of my tap water

PH low >7.6
PH high >8.8 a bright violet.
Ammonia 0.5 ppm maby a little closer to 1ppm
No2 0ppm
No3 20 - 40ppm

For further info in the tank are

1 platy - Plan on re stocking once tank established.
4 guppys
3 cardinal tetra's - Plan on re stocking them once tank established.
A coliny of small snails has appeared - Suspect from plants
4 ornaments
1 Lilaeopsis - Has a black velvet looking algy on it.
1 Hygrophila
and had one tall plant which died.
Gravel substrate

My main question is is their any need to keep doing water changes every couple of days if the ammonia in the tank is lower than the tap water? and will such a high tap water PH be problematic? as I don't want to have to play around with my water chemistry.

Also how long should i expect the filter to take to mature?

When doing water changes I use larger than instructed on the bottle doses of seachem prime.

Regards

Mark

 

[KittyKat]

Firstly, your tap water sucks majorly. Can you get hold of clean, unpolluted rainwater?

You are right to be using a dechlorinator which deals with ammonia and probably at least double dosing that. As already said, your tap water sucks.

Normally, at this point, I would be recommending water changes every day to keep ammonia and nitrite well below 0.25 ppm, but in this case, you are better off not doing water changes any more often that once per week, but detoxifying the ammonia already in the tank with Prime. Another problem is that ammonia is more toxic at a high pH such as yours.
On the other hand, if you do have access to rainwater, RO water or any other sort of relatively "pure" and ammonia free water, you could use that 50:50 with tap water for water changes.

Your pH is not problematic and you are right to be weary of messing about with it. It will drop slightly with plants and bogwood additions, but don't expect it to fall below 7.0 or so. It's a good pH for livebearers (be careful to not have a population explosion) and is ok for espei rasboras (harlequins are too large for your tank) so you may want to consider swapping the cardinals out for those.

A fish-in cycle usually takes 6-8+ weeks, which is why we always recommend a fish-less as that is often shorter.

 

[BigbruiserAl]

filters can take as little as 20 days to cycle if seeded and upto forever 70 days+ if your unlucky.

When testing your tap water its better to let it stand for 24 hours before testing it your ph will be much diff when gases have gone and is more of a true reflection of standing tank water

 

[westtra]

Firstly, your tap water sucks majorly. Can you get hold of clean, unpolluted rainwater?

Normally, at this point, I would be recommending water changes every day to keep ammonia and nitrite well below 0.25 ppm, but in this case, you are better off not doing water changes any more often that once per week, but detoxifying the ammonia already in the tank with Prime. Another problem is that ammonia is more toxic at a high pH such as yours.
On the other hand, if you do have access to rainwater, RO water or any other sort of relatively "pure" and ammonia free water, you could use that 50:50 with tap water for water changes.

Your pH is not problematic and you are right to be weary of messing about with it. It will drop slightly with plants and bogwood additions, but don't expect it to fall below 7.0 or so. It's a good pH for livebearers (be careful to not have a population explosion) and is ok for espei rasboras (harlequins are too large for your tank) so you may want to consider swapping the cardinals out for those.

A fish-in cycle usually takes 6-8+ weeks, which is why we always recommend a fish-less as that is often shorter.

don't know anyone that has a rain water drum but were next to sea so water ain't that clean that generally falls near us going by the state of the car etc after a shower.

For RO water wluld getting one of those inline filters for tap water be sufficient as dont really want to be buying loads of it as planning on going for a larger tank if get on ok with the smaller one.

I'm assuming you mean the water is crap due to the high ammonia? I take it this is due to the water being dosed with chlorameen?

filters can take as little as 20 days to cycle if seeded and upto forever 70 days+ if your unlucky.

When testing your tap water its better to let it stand for 24 hours before testing it your ph will be much diff when gases have gone and is more of a true reflection of standing tank water

I'll go stick some in a glass and test it tomorrow and post up my findings.

 

[This Old Spouse]

Sounds to me like you're figuring out not to listen to the LFS staff, and doing things right.

I think you should invest in a piece of bogwood which would bring down your tank pH naturally. No need for chems. Just be sure to read up on preparing it for your tank.

If things have been going for 6 weeks, I'd say you can back off on the water changes. Your filter should be coming of age. Using Seachem Prime with your water changes is good.

As long as there's food you'll have snails. They're a symptom of overfeeding.

 

[KittyKat]

Firstly, your tap water sucks majorly. Can you get hold of clean, unpolluted rainwater?

don't know anyone that has a rain water drum but were next to sea so water ain't that clean that generally falls near us going by the state of the car etc after a shower.

I'd pass on that then..

For RO water wluld getting one of those inline filters for tap water be sufficient as dont really want to be buying loads of it as planning on going for a larger tank if get on ok with the smaller one.

I don't know much about the inline filters, so can't recommend anything either way. It was just an idea, so not really worth worrying about.

I'm assuming you mean the water is crap due to the high ammonia? I take it this is due to the water being dosed with chlorameen?

Yes, because of ammonia. There are a number of reasons for this, but chloramine is not a common one (although when chloramine is mixed with a dechlorinator, it does result in ammonia).

If things have been going for 6 weeks, I'd say you can back off on the water changes. Your filter should be coming of age.

A cycle can take much longer than 6 weeks and there's still a consistent ammonia reading, I would still treat the filter as uncycled at least until that is gone.

 

[Gelt]

Maybe worth contacting your water company, they may have done a chemical flush because of a few problem houses in your street or a clean out of a treatment plant that feeds your area, hence readings that suck bigtime!

 

[Mogs26]

It's also worth making sure you check your stats in daylight-not artificial-I worried a lot about slight ammonia levels in my water, but was advised that some artificial lights make the readings look slightly green-checked in daylight and the results were fine!

 

[cocomonkey24k]

i agree with mogs26 i kept checking my results in the living room light only to find when i checked them near a window the results were very different indeed. i am also at the beginning of a fish in cycle. i didnt realise how much there was to learn about tropical fish keeping until i joined this forum (i also found all the information given here far more helpful than what i was being told by the LFS)

 

[westtra]

I think you should invest in a piece of bogwood which would bring down your tank pH naturally. No need for chems. Just be sure to read up on preparing it for your tank.

Would like to put it in but due to small size of current tank I think it may be a bit too much and persuading the other half to remove the ornament she chose will be hard. Their will be no chance with the 2 year old and his sharks.

As long as there's food you'll have snails. They're a symptom of overfeeding.

I have been wondering if the ammonia is overfeeding but the food is usually gone within a minute or 2 when feeding but if you say snails are due to over feeding it makes sense were maby overfeeding.

Yes, because of ammonia. There are a number of reasons for this, but chloramine is not a common one (although when chloramine is mixed with a dechlorinator, it does result in ammonia).

Ammonia reading is without seachem prime so rules that out. Not 100% sure where the water comes from but the reservoir is built into a hill so may be getting chemicals/ph increase from the soil etc

It's also worth making sure you check your stats in daylight-not artificial-I worried a lot about slight ammonia levels in my water, but was advised that some artificial lights make the readings look slightly green-checked in daylight and the results were fine!

Have just checked and there is definately a difference in bright sunlight and daylight and does look more yellow in daylight but bright sunlight is just like the 50w halogen bulbs where i'm doing the tests normally.

 

[AstonN24vantage]

do you still have the betta? im sorry but you're going to lose it if you haven't already. theres no cure for NTD

 

[KittyKat]

As long as there's food you'll have snails. They're a symptom of overfeeding.

I have been wondering if the ammonia is overfeeding but the food is usually gone within a minute or 2 when feeding but if you say snails are due to over feeding it makes sense were maby overfeeding.

Until all problems are sorted, feed as much as they can completely finish in 30 seconds, once per day. Once you're out of the cycle, increase to twice per day and one day per week without food.

 

[Mogs26]

Have just checked and there is definately a difference in bright sunlight and daylight and does look more yellow in daylight but bright sunlight is just like the 50w halogen bulbs where i'm doing the tests normally.

My halogens definitely make my readings more yellow-I was quite surprised!

 

[westtra]

do you still have the betta? im sorry but you're going to lose it if you haven't already. theres no cure for NTD

No betta was gone over 6 weeks ago and the same day the new filter went in after discussion with a more knowledgeable LFS.

 

[westtra]

filters can take as little as 20 days to cycle if seeded and upto forever 70 days+ if your unlucky.

When testing your tap water its better to let it stand for 24 hours before testing it your ph will be much diff when gases have gone and is more of a true reflection of standing tank water

Just tested my water after sitting out all night and ph is 7.8 on high range. I take it for water changes it would be advisable to get a couple large water drums and fill them the day before a water change so i'm not shocking the fish with big ph changes?