jeepie
New Member
I posted a question about new tank problems a couple weeks ago, but it appears it was one of the ones that were deleted, anyway here is an update:
I bought and set up a 10 gal tank the day after xmas and ended up with too many fish in a tank that wasn't cycled, (thanks Petsmart) I then found this site and started reading and asking questions, I started doing 25% water changes mostly every day to keep the ammonia level down until the tank cycled. Well I did this for about 2 weeks and nitrites never went up from zero, and I found that the ammonia test strips were very hard to read so I was going to go to Petsmart and buy a ammonia kit that had drops and some stress zime (sp) to help the tank cycle. On my way I remembered there was a lfs right up the road so I decided to stop there, couldn't hurt. I asked about the test kit and the girl said the strips were crap for ammoina, I also asked her if stress zime was any good. She said they had something better called Bio-Spira, and since I saw it mentioned here I decided to try it, I think it was $9.99. She also said you had to keep it cold so I figured must be something to it. I did a 50% water change and added the Bio-Spira on Jan 31, the Bio-Spira does make your water cloudy for a day, she said not to change the water for a couple weeks and test the water often. Well let me tell you that stuff is great, within 3 days my ammoina was way down and I also started to get nitrite readings, I just checked the water today and I now have 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, and about 35 nitrates, so in 9 days it looks like it went from out of control to cycled. Bio-Spira is great stuff and I would recommend it to anyone.
Thanks everyone for all the help you gave me, this is a great site with helpful people.
There is more to this fish keeping thing than one would think.
And I still have all the fish I started with.
I bought and set up a 10 gal tank the day after xmas and ended up with too many fish in a tank that wasn't cycled, (thanks Petsmart) I then found this site and started reading and asking questions, I started doing 25% water changes mostly every day to keep the ammonia level down until the tank cycled. Well I did this for about 2 weeks and nitrites never went up from zero, and I found that the ammonia test strips were very hard to read so I was going to go to Petsmart and buy a ammonia kit that had drops and some stress zime (sp) to help the tank cycle. On my way I remembered there was a lfs right up the road so I decided to stop there, couldn't hurt. I asked about the test kit and the girl said the strips were crap for ammoina, I also asked her if stress zime was any good. She said they had something better called Bio-Spira, and since I saw it mentioned here I decided to try it, I think it was $9.99. She also said you had to keep it cold so I figured must be something to it. I did a 50% water change and added the Bio-Spira on Jan 31, the Bio-Spira does make your water cloudy for a day, she said not to change the water for a couple weeks and test the water often. Well let me tell you that stuff is great, within 3 days my ammoina was way down and I also started to get nitrite readings, I just checked the water today and I now have 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, and about 35 nitrates, so in 9 days it looks like it went from out of control to cycled. Bio-Spira is great stuff and I would recommend it to anyone.
Thanks everyone for all the help you gave me, this is a great site with helpful people.
There is more to this fish keeping thing than one would think.
And I still have all the fish I started with.
