New To Tropical Fish Keeping

[Mafro]

Evening everyone.

I recently bought myself a Trigon 190l corner tank having wanted to keep tropical fish for over a year now. The shop I have purchased it from has been extremely helpful, and I cant wait to get my fish.

The tank was delivered Wednesday, and I cleaned my bag of gravel and added to the tank, then filled it up. Both the heater and fileter have been on since Wednesday evening (so just over 3 full days now) Also Wednesday I added the correct ammount of declorinator doe 190l of water, and also added Sera bio cultures which is meant to build up the bacteria in my filter. Tonight I tested the water, and have the following readings. I was wondering if people could tell me if my tank is looking like its heading in the right direction, or if there is anything that I need to do.
My plans at the moment are to add some plants to the tank tomorrow, and a few fish next weekend. But your advise would be greatly received.
I am planning on having a community tank, with fish such as Guppies, Mollys, tetras etc..

My tap water has a PH reading of between 7 and 7.2
The PH currently in my tank is 8 (this seems high to me??)
Ammonia is currently at 0
Nitrite levels are also 0
Nitrate is at 40

Any words of wisdom would be really recommended, as I am very new to this being my first tank. I have over the past few days spent many hours reading this forum, and its excellent. I look forward to my stay here

Thanks in advance
Mafro

 

[littlest]

Hi mafro! welcome!

All sounds good except for one thing:

the best way by far to prepare a tank for fish is doing a fishless cycle. In order for the bacteria to build up they need a food source, ammonia.

By adding ammonia to a new tank (one without fish) we feed the bacteria we need for when the fish come.

there is a good link to doing what is called a fishless cycle. at the top of the page here

You can cycle a tank (cycling is building up the bacteria) with a few small hardy fish, but fishless cycling is quicker and easier and much nicer to your fish.

to summarise the fishless cycle process:

ammonia (can be bought in bottles) is added to the tank water to bring it up to 4-5ppm (you'll need test kits to measure it)
it is left and tested daily. After a while bacteria will colonise your filter and break down the ammonia to nitrite. (you'll test for this too)
Then another type of bacteria will also colonise your filter to break down the nitrite into nitrate
Ammonia and nitrite is toxic to fish, wheras nitrate isn't
A full explanation is in the link above, so read that through and come back with any questions.

 

[OldMan47]

It sounds to me like you already have something going on that has the bacteria working in your tank. If you can add the ammonia in small amounts and end up with no measurable ammonia by the next day, the bio cultures that you put in may have been successful at getting your cycle finished or nearly so. That is what your water samples are telling me. If so, it is time to either feed the bacteria with small amounts of ammonia to keep it going or put some fish in the tank so the bacteria won't start to die off. Littlest advice is very good if you don't yet have the bacterial colony but it sounds like you may have gotten lucky with the product you bought.
So many products that are labelled as bacterial cultures are dead and useless that we all assume that they all are. If you have been so fortunate, please don't wait 2 weeks and let the bacteria die off.

 

[littlest]

It sounds to me like you already have something going on that has the bacteria working in your tank. If you can add the ammonia in small amounts and end up with no measurable ammonia by the next day, the bio cultures that you put in may have been successful at getting your cycle finished or nearly so. That is what your water samples are telling me.

OldMan, I'm assumming this is based on the nitrates being at 40ppm? Worth noting that such nitrate levels aren't uncommon in tap water in London (and other places I believe). I would be surprised if his tank had cycled in 3 days.

Mafro, have you tested your tap water? its good to know what you are starting with.

 

[Mafro]

I had tested my tap waters PH levels, but not the nitrates. I shall do this and let you know the levels.
I shall see if I can pick up some ammonia today when I get my plants then

Also with my tank water being highter than my tap water. What is it that causes this? And is a level of 8.0 OK for the type of fish I would like to keep?

Cheers for your advice people.

 

[littlest]

just to let you know, ammonia needs to be free of perfume and surfacants. It should be just ammonia and water. You can buy it in Boots and Homebase if you are in the UK, or hardware stores and pound shops. If it doesn't list the ingredients, shake the bottle up, then open it. If has foamed on the top don't buy it.

In general fish will do better in a high, stable pH, than a swinging pH. Chemicals you can buy to alter the pH will caus swings (bad for fish) and are therefore best avoided.

Most common community fish can be acclimatised to a wide range of pH so should be fine in your water. I have a tank with a pH of 8 (tap water about 7.4) and I've not had any problems with.

If you do want to lower it, you can add bogwood or add peat to your filter

 

[OldMan47]

Littlest:
It sounds like I would not be drinking the water in London. Nitrates are not good for people either. You are right, that may have misled me since it sounded like a full conversion set of readings. The plants will help bring down the nitrogen in the tank so they might even make the water safer for the fish by removing the nitrates. It sounds like they would be a must with tap water like that.

 

[littlest]

Littlest:
It sounds like I would not be drinking the water in London. Nitrates are not good for people either. You are right, that may have misled me since it sounded like a full conversion set of readings. The plants will help bring down the nitrogen in the tank so they might evem make the water safer for the fish by removing the nitrates. It sounds like they would be a must with tap water like that.

lol. London water is pretty gross. It's really hard too, you can see a lot of sediment when you pour a glass, sometimes its nearly opaque, it stinks of the chlorine/chloramine and coupled with that, most houses in London are old with copper or lead pipes, or even leather pipes (yes I said leather).

I looked up info from the water board. My area has an average nitrate of 25.5, average nitrite of 0.028 and average ammonium 0.08.
Aresnic is 0.8, cyanide 2, mercury 0.05 (there's loads of other metals it lists too). One sample found coliform bacteria and one sample exceeded permitted lead levels... yum

In the area I used to live in nitrates were higher than that. Never registered any nitrite or ammonia though.