Just Got My Tank

teddybear

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i just got my tank a 54L, got the water in it and some plants with gravle, just fineshed reading guide to the tropical aquarium by dick mills and looking throw a book with detales of the fish righting down 1s i like the look of size of tank it needs temps and if its top middle or bottom swimmer at the mowment when ive gone throw it i will read it more closely to come up with my list of fish and how many i will have when its fully stoked, as well as keeping an eye on the tempture of my water when i get up with the cold weather to make sure the temp is the same,
 
Great news, do you plan to do a fish in or a fish less cycle. A Fish less cycle is a little boring as you don't have fish to watch, but much better in the long run for the fish, also much easier on you. Check out this link to the Beginner's resource section, has a lot of great information http://www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/277264-beginners-resource-center/.

Sorry I assume you are new to fish keeping, if your not sorry for the assumption :blush:
 
yes very new to fish. fish less cycle as i need to get a bit more gravel plants and hyeds for the fish realy, sis gave me my birth day and xmass cash early, so i got it up and running as i were on the bear basics, thats why ive not got the water all the way up as i now the more i put in the mover the water will wont to over flow lol
 
Welcome to the forum Teddybear.
The fishless cycle is not about getting the tank set up with a filter and heater in it. It is about getting the filter ready to keep your fish from being poisoned by their own wastes. Fish produce ammonia as a biological process byproduct and release it into the water mostly through their gills. Unfortunately, we do not keep them in large rivers or streams where that ammonia can be diluted easily, so the fish end up seeing it build up in the water. That build can quickly kill a fish if the filter is not ready to remove it. The filters that we buy for our tanks are just hardware. There is a whole set of testing skills that you will need to develop, along with some understanding of the processes that go on in your water before you will be able to complete a fishless cycle.

Back to the starting point. The nitrogen cycle in the natural setting is simple but not so simple. Wastes of all kinds including fish respiration at their gills and decaying organic matter produce ammonia. Bacteria exist that can use the ammonia for their own needs but in the process will convert ammonia to nitrites. Nitrites are also poisonous to fish but, fortunately for us, bacteria also exist that use nitrites and convert it in the process to nitrates. Nitrates are absorbed by plants for their growth and are also converted by anaerobic bacteria to simple nitrogen gas. The part that converts to nitrogen ends up back into the atmosphere where it really started before becoming part of something that the fish ate. The part that goes into plant growth eventually ends up being eaten by something and again becomes decaying waste. The cycle is complete.

We do not have the room or the time to wait for a complete nitrogen cycle in our tanks so we short circuit it. We encourage the ammonia processing bacteria and the nitrite processing bacteria to grow in our filters. Once they are well established, we control the much less toxic nitrates by doing water changes and some of us also grow some plants to help slow down the nitrate build. In the aquarium hobby, we say that a tank is cycled when it has a filter capable of dealing with ammonia and leaving behind only nitrates. Please take the time to read the threads about fishless cycling and if you are still not convinced it is the best way to go, read up on how to do a fish-in cycle. Regardless of what you do, the tank will cycle on its own. The difference that you can make is how many fish will die before it is finished.
 
yes the next thing im going to get is the betera i need for my tank im not looking for fish till some point of jan im not rushing it
 
There is no way to just go out and buy the bacteria that you need. They need to be grown in your filter. The only shortcut to doing that is getting some mature media from a functioning filter in someone else's tank. The bottled things marked as bacteria are pretty much just some dead bacteria that might have possibly been alive when they were first put into the bottle. If you like to waste your hard earned cash, go ahead and get some, but do a fishless cycle after and make sure that you have a functional filter colony before adding fish. My own prediction on that course of action is that it will take 4 to 8 weeks, just like it always does without the bottled bacteria product.
 
my mate andy runs the fish bit and will do a water test for me, it wont be till my birth day in jan that i will have the cash so thats 4 weeks ish, im looking at geting the haberta set first all the plants in etc be for i think of getting fish in, it would be nice if there was some free soft wear were you can plan your tank out with fish and plants. with a shole how many fish makes 1 up as i seen some fish saying likes to be in a shole im guessing its above 4 fish
 
When people talk about shoaling fish, it is usual to think of it as fish that do better when kept in numbers of at least 6.
 

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