I'm Using Purified Water, Do I Need To Cycle?

[ICEAL]

I'm getting a 10 gal tank tomorrow because as i have read, mollies breed like crazy. So if i'm using purified water, do i need to cycle?

And can i keep fancy guppies in brackish water with mollies?

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Yes. (And what is purified water?? If you mean RO or distilled then you can not use that alone.)

No.

 

[Ruthy]

The point of cycling is to build up bacteria in the filter. Purified water will have little if any bacteria (if RO water there will be el zilcho. You'd have to use normal water as well) and if you don't cycle you will have many fish gasping at the top with red streaks down their body and then they will die.
Guppies don't do great in brackish water.

 

[onidrase]

Purified water lacks minerals and hardness that are essential for all fish. It's bad for them to use nothing but purified water. You'll want a mixture of 50/50 at best. No matter what you use, though, you'll need to cycle the tank. Ammonia is produced by the fishes waste and breathing, so the point of cycling isn't to make tap water safe, it's to make fish safe.

 

[lloyd]

you always need a to cycle your filter no matter what your water parameters. jwhy exactly are you using purified water (im assuming its ro). ro (reverse osmosis) is so heavily filtered by a number of procceses that it completly lacks in minerals and hardness making it completly unstable and unsuitable for fish on so many levels.

the main reason people use ro water is to water down there real hard tap water so they can keep delicate fish that prefer softer water like german blue rams. if your fish is captive bred and one of the more common species of tropicals like most the ones we see in pet shops than there is no need to uuse ro in most cases. mollies are perfectly fine in harder water, infact they prefer it the harder the better .

i dont mean this to sound negative because i only want to help your fish but if you dont understand the basics of cycling fish tanks then a brackish tank mught not be the best way forward. if you look in the beginers section on this site there are threads that will clear every thing you need to no about cycling and if you googling reverse osmosis water that should clear thins up for you.

what are you water parameters btw?

lloyd

 

[ICEAL]

i'm researching now so i know what i'll buy tomorrow. hat's why i'm asking here.

here my list so far:
-tank
-filter
-hood w/light
-conditioners
-test kit
-substrate
-live and plastic plant


Alright here is my story...
Last Thursday i bought a trio of balloon mollies (1 F black, 1 F yellow/orange, 1 M white)and keep them in a 1gal critter keeper.(thinking of 100% water change every other day)
i cleaned it Saturday then Monday came and i saw that the 2 female spawned hence, the reason for my 1st post.
when i woke up there are only 3 left (1 yellow and 2 black, still thriving today) and found 9 dead, 4 yellow and
5 black. So since Monday i have been reading and committed to spend money.

The reason for asking the fancy guppies was because i was thinking of tank mates.
I just hope the 6 will survive until i cycled the tank.

BTW, since Monday i just do 20-30% water change a day.

Edit: i think the reason they died is because they got stuck in the glass beads i used as substrates.

Can i cycle just using these? or do i need a filter that sucks up the water and back?

 

[lloyd]

you definatly need a filter. i would imagine the reason you lost all your fish is due to poor water wuality. if your changing 20 to 30% of your water every day in a tank with out a cycled filter ammonia will build up and harm your fish. any traces of ammonia are deadly to fish especially few day old fry. unless you get a filter quickly over time you will lose all your fish including the adults.

not having a filter comes with other issues as well like lack of dissolved oxygen within the tank which is also a killer.

you need to get a filter today and then keep up with 50% water changes at least as you will be in whats called a fish in cycle. you really should look in the beginners section at fish in cycles it will tell you all you need to know. in my opinion though you will probably lose all the fry as they already have been exposed to levels of ammonia.

you also need a tank at leat 2 feet long to kepp balloon mollies

 

[KittyKat]

ICEAL first thing is go get a *liquid* set of tests, these *must* include ammonia and nitrite. IMO/IME, the second most important kits are KH and GH, with nitrate and pH coming last.

here my list so far:
-tank

Guppies and balloon mollies should both have at least a 60*30*30 cm tank for a few fish. If you want to have a tank full of guppies and balloon mollies or keep the young, then ideally aim at at least 90*30*30 cm. A taller tank will not really allow you to keep any more fish, so if you look at larger volumes, expand all directions, not only up!

Re: what Ruthy said… Neither guppies, nor most mollies need brackish water, but both need hard water (which can be tested with the KH and GH kits). Some mollies do need brackish water, but all shop-bought ones are hybrids (which is why I would not keep them anyway, even ignoring the fact that balloon ones are bred to be warped), so there is no way to find out what conditions their ancestors come from. Having said that, most guppies and mollies would not suffer from brackish water, but brackish conditions are more difficult to maintain that freshwater.

What type of salt are you using to get the brackish conditions and what are you using to measure the salinity of the water?

-filter

Fry friendly ones are sponge filters, but you can stick a sponge over an external filter intake to make it fry friendly (I recommend Eheim Classic range, my oldest one is over 24 years old and works as new). Stockings over internal and box filters also work.

-hood w/light

+ light timer, electronic ones are really nice and not *that* much more than mechanical ones if you're buying them individually.

-conditioners

…elaborate please. If you mean dechlorinators, then you should be using one which claims to deal with ammonia and nitrite at least until your filter is cycled. A popular example of this type of dechlorinator would be Prime by Seachem. If your tap water contains chloramine, then you should be using a dechlorinator which deals with ammonia in the long term.

[…]
-substrate

I strongly recommend sand as it gives you more options for fish in the long term. It is possible to use things like play sand, sharp sand (sand with small stones) or some garden gravels instead of aquarium gravels, just check that they have not been treated with anything (normally, they are not). If you are in UK, I have recently used Homebase sharp sand without any problems.

Last Thursday i bought a trio of balloon mollies (1 F black, 1 F yellow/orange, 1 M white)and keep them in a 1gal critter keeper.(thinking of 100% water change every other day)

100% water changes *every* day. Unfortunately, a 1 gallon uncycled container is not really any good for three adult mollies, so I really strongly recommend that you upgrade the tank mediately. With the same fish, even in a 14 US gallon tank (60*30*30 cm, which is my recommended minimum), I would expect to be seeing 75-90% water changes 1-3 times per day for a fish-in cycle.

i cleaned it Saturday then Monday came and i saw that the 2 female spawned hence, the reason for my 1st post.

The spawning happened around 4 weeks ago it was just the birthing that happened on Monday.

when i woke up there are only 3 left (1 yellow and 2 black, still thriving today) and found 9 dead, 4 yellow and
5 black. So since Monday i have been reading and committed to spend money.

The reason for asking the fancy guppies was because i was thinking of tank mates.
I just hope the 6 will survive until i cycled the tank.

BTW, since Monday i just do 20-30% water change a day.

Edit: i think the reason they died is because they got stuck in the glass beads i used as substrates.

This is very unlikely to be the reason for the deaths. Much more likely, it was ammonia poisoning. Are all the fish in the same tank right now? If yes, then the only thing you can do for them is do much larger water changes on a daily basis.

Can i cycle just using these? or do i need a filter that sucks up the water and back?

When one cycles a filter, one cycles the media which is inside it. It does not matter which filter is used as long as water passes through the media at a reasonable rate. If you ever change the filter, you will need to move the old (cycled) media into the new filter.

 

[OldMan47]

In the US those tank measurements Kitty Kat gave would be 2 feet by 1 foot by 1 foot and 3 feet by 1 foot by 1 foot. It is easy to just figure 30 cm is close enough to a foot for what we are talking about. It is actually very close to the same thing.Actually, 30 cm is about 11.8 inches but that is plenty close enough to a foot in this context. None of the commonly available fresh water Poeciliids require brackish water but mollies tolerate it very well. Guppies, P. reticulata, do not tolerate the same amount of salt that common pet shop mollies can tolerate. In fact common pet shop mollies can be readily acclimated to a pure salt water tank, something that would quickly put an end to a guppy. Both fish can readily exist in the same rather hard water that has a pH of well over 7.0, but that is not the same as treating them like so many french fries and salting them. My own tap water runs about 12 degrees of both hardness and KH with a pH of about 7.8 and a TDS of 225 ppm. In my tap water both guppies and mollies not only survive but thrive. I hate to say this, as a devout livebearer fan, but my tap water dictates much about the fish that I actually keep. If I had soft water closer to a neutral pH, I might well stoop to breeding angel fish, Corydoras or something similar.

 

[ICEAL]

This is what i got
http/www.petco.com/product/12503/Mardel-Master-Test-Kit.aspx?CoreCat=MM_FishSupplies_TestingEquipment
http/www.petco.com/product/3263/Aquarium-Products-Freshwater-Biozyme.aspx?CoreCat=MM_FishSupplies_ConditionersAdditives
http/www.petco.com/product/102600/Aqueon-Ammonia-Neutralizer.aspx?CoreCat=MM_FishSupplies_ConditionersAdditives

anyone know how to use them?

 

[KittyKat]

[…] Guppies, P. reticulata, do not tolerate the same amount of salt that common pet shop mollies can tolerate. In fact common pet shop mollies can be readily acclimated to a pure salt water tank, something that would quickly put an end to a guppy.

Some years ago, I observed some guppies (at what was then my LFS) which were raised and kept in a marine tank (with corals, not fish, so salinity would have been around 1.020) for a period of at least six months. I still strongly advise against

This is what i got [test strips]

These are not very accurate, and definitely not accurate enough for a fish-in cycle. Often, strips are only good enough for a "yes/no" result, or can give false positives and false negatives.

[biozyme and ammonia remover]

The biozyme probably won't do anything, but since you have it, might as well use it. The ammonia remover should be included in whichever dechlorinator you are using, or if it is not, use plenty of it and NOT as a substitute for water changes. Dechlorinator is compulsory, unless you want your fish to have chlorine "poisoning".

 

[ICEAL]

i also have this http/www.petco.com/product/102599/Aqueon-Water-Conditioner.aspx?CoreCat=MM_FishSupplies_ConditionersAdditives

i'm doing a fishless cycle i just do 100% water change in the 1gal, it's less work than the fish-in cycle and more faster to cycle or so i read.

 

[Ruthy]

If you're doing a fishless cycle, there is no need for water changes apart from a big one to dillute high nitrates before adding the fish. Fishless cycling can take around a month to many months. One I did took 5 months. All you need to add is ammonia to spike it and test the water daily to see how it's going. Can't quite remember but I think spiking to about 2ppm was good.

 

[ICEAL]

i think i'm at .5-1 ppm of ammonia. i'm using water from the 1gal before i change it, ican't find any ammonia near me.

vons, cvs, walgreen, ralphs don't carry it. vons said they don't know if it's legal in CA.

edit*
walgreen has it, i just called. i misunderstood my sister when i asked if walgreen has it and she said she didn't go cause she forgot. (in our native language)

 

[Tolak]

Ace Hardware carries ammonia; http/www.acehardware.com/product/index.jsp?productId=1272325&kw=ammonia&lmdn=Brand&searchId=61200148953

It's a common cleaning supply, readily available in the US.