Newbie Help!

[mtbdean]

Hello All. Started Fish Keeping Again, as its a hobby that I can now understand being older and such.

I have Three Tanks:

60l Rena Tank, Daylight 15w bulbs on 10hr timer.
Pea Gravel Substrate(3mm)about 2 inches deep
A Few different decorations
2 50litre Filters
1 Air Bubble Wall
And a 50w heater.
Fully planted with an assortment of Plants.
3 Guppies, 3 Platies and 2 Corydora's Aggazzii(sp)

70l Tank with Daylight Bulb on 10hr timer
Same Substrate
Slate and Pepples for Decoration
a 90l Filter with Raised Bar out of water
Air Bubble wall
50w Heater
and the same, 3 Guppies, 3 Platies and 2 Corys

Other Tank is a 30litre Breeding/Quarantine tank
No Substrate
Lots of Plastic Plants
50w Heater
Air Driven Sponge Filter
This tank has 2 Snails in, with a lot of Young.

I set these tanks up a while ago, left the tanks fishless for 4 weeks, then introduced the fish. 3 Platies in each tank.

A few days later, after testing, all was fine with the tests. 0.1 ammonia, around 10 for Nitrate(i think) and 0.1 for Nitrite(i think)

I then introduced the Guppies and Corys.

The Ammonia stayed the same, but the nitrites shot up, to almost 4.0mg/l! Which wasnt good of course.

The Last set up tank,(a days difference) was perfectly fine though, and i lost all three platies in the 70l tank over the course of a few days.

As a last ditch attempt, i moved all the fish into the 60l tank and all the levels have stayed correct and low, but after trying many different ways, the 70l tank's levels were too high!

The Chemicals used to start the tanks were Nutrafin Cycle Bio Aquarium Supplement, and also Nutrafnin tap Water Conditioner

I have tried various water changes with R/O Filtered Water + Dechlorinator, to which the levels dropped a little, but went up overnight

Now i have used "Sera Toxivec" which removes chlorine, nitrite and ammonia, and also Tetra Aqua Easy Balance, which 'Stabilises' PH + KH, but also has 'Nitrate reduction Granules" and also added a small amount of Aquarium Salt, but still nothing?

Help Me please!

Dean.

 

[Gvilleguy]

Hey Dean,

It certainly seems that your 70L is not yet fully cycled. When you left the tanks without fish for 4 weeks, did you add a food source such as ammonia to kick start the bacteria production? From reading other user opinions on this forum, the chemicals sold by the fish stores do not appear to do much good in terms of getting the tanks cycled.

If you have not yet done so, swing by the beginner's section here:

Beginner's Resource Center

...and have a read about the cycle methods. At this point it seems that you could do a fishless cycle on the 70L tank, and just monitor the 60L to make sure you don't need to follow a fish-in cycle on that one.

 

[mtbdean]

Bit of an update, and thanks for the link Gvilleguy.

60l with all the Fish in
nitrate 5
nitrite 0.2
Ammonia 0
PH 7

70l with now 2 Danio's in
nitrate 5
nitrite 0.3
Ammonia 0
PH 7.5

Does this sound about right guys?

 

[Gvilleguy]

Since you have fish in both tanks now, you are doing fish-in cycling practices. You're looking good to me so far...just have to keep up some water changes to keep nitrite down.

 

[onebto]

Looks like things are improving plenty of water changes will help

Sounds like you had not quite finished the cycle thats why when you do water changes your water stats improve but the next day they are back to normal.

As mentioned large regular water changes are what are going to keep your fish safe, for now I would not add anymore fish and go to the the resource centre and read up on the Nitrogeon cycle and fish in cycleing.

As Gvilleguy mentioned that stuff you used to cycle your tanks is not very good "JOJO juice" and is not recomended by most here and only highly recomended by some Local fish shops as they can get an earner out of each bottle they sell.

Good luck Regards onebto.

 

[mtbdean]

I forgot to say, I also seeded the tank a little today by putting a small sponge from a Washing up sponge from our Fish Pond into the tank today Cheers for the advice ppl!