What Fish Suit 60X30X42Cm Tank?

[mike455555]

fish can last a week without food, naturally there scavengers they dont get fed at 5 o'clock every night. i feed mine every 4 days or so (depends on when i remember to be honest)

but in a cycle you can cut down on the amount / how often you put food in


if you have plants in the tank the photo period should be 8-12 hours,if you dont have plants then its down to you

benefits of lights in tank's are... you can see the fish and there colours better, helps plant growth

artificial lights look brilliant in thanks... i couldn't live without having my tank lit

 

[clown_loach]

fish can last a week without food, naturally there scavengers they dont get fed at 5 o'clock every night. i feed mine every 4 days or so (depends on when i remember to be honest)

but in a cycle you can cut down on the amount / how often you put food in


if you have plants in the tank the photo period should be 8-12 hours,if you dont have plants then its down to you

benefits of lights in tank's are... you can see the fish and there colours better, helps plant growth

artificial lights look brilliant in thanks... i couldn't live without having my tank lit

OK, I'll try to be a less worried parent of my six little charges

"but in a cycle" ... learning new jargon. To help, I've got a log of what I added, when and any other notable things.

I'm assuming when I added my fish I began a 'fish in cycle'. Have just been reading the 'fish in cycle' over in the beginners guide - phew quite a technical read and a personal comment would be that it's a tad too techie for a novice/learner. Now feeling overwhelmed and unsure what I need to do and when. I guess I'll figure it out.

Sorry to randomly ask questions! When adding new water to the tank as part of this cycle (although not sure when yet), the water will be coming from tap so I know I have to add Aquasafe to make the water safe for fish. I'm thinking I should have a bucket of new water to add ready by leaving it to stand to at least get to room temperature and just before I add, mix in the Aquasafe would welcome your advice on this too.

 

[mike455555]

personally i dont use aqua safe although id recommend it definitely. i just leave my water to stand its only to get rid of the choline / chloride in the water. you could use rain water and it would be fairly safe

to sum up the cycle

fish poo has ammonia in it. bacteria in your filter turn this in to nitrites and then to nitrates (2 different types of bacteria)all of theses substances are harmful to fish

ammonia in small amounts if deadly same with nitrites... but nitrates arint as harmful.

thats why you do a water change to get rid of the nitrates

when your cycle starts there should be a ammonia spike you will slowly see this decrease as the bacteria build up. but ammonia is harmful to your fish.. so you should do a water change every day (or something like that)

then nitrite eating bacteria come and there should be a fall in the amount of nitrite in the tank (still doing water changes)

when both ammonia and nitrites are at 0 ppm (parts per million) you can cut back on the water changes a little like do one every week


tap water contains chlorine/ chloride (to make it safe for us to drink) buy killing the bacteria in the water. now stick this into your tank.. and it will kill off the bacteria in there as well (which you don't want to do)

chlorine evaporates readily (over night)
chloride however does not. this is where the aqua safe comes in

some water cleaning places only put one of theses in some put both (my water only contains choline as iv not had a problem with my filter by leaving the water over night)

chlorine and chloride are made safe by the aqua safe


hope this help's a little =]

 

[cynic]

Depends on the amount of water your changing, on a 2ft tank a good bucket fullwould be about right as a regular change during the process.

As you are going to be doing it a lot, take out a bucket full leaving the filter alone (bar tuning it and your heater off) then pour the water out, on the garden is good as plants love it. (The potted stuff in my garden is very happy with my tank.) If you have a electric shower you can fill the same bucket with tepid water (if you use the hot tap you may have a water softener in the boiler system that can spoil the water you need to check) and add a know amount of tapsafe, then return this to the tank.

You may be doing this daily depending on the water, you just got to keep on top of your testing.

I cheated and tracked down a mature filter

 

[clown_loach]

Brilliant, nicely put in nice easy language to understand

 

[mike455555]

i did a cycle the first time then stole water from my set up tanks =D (it sped up the cycle) even though it wasn't media

 

[clown_loach]

... just thinking. Is rain water a better source than tap water? We live in an area where the water co. adds high levels of 'additives' shall we say!

 

[mike455555]

sorry i miss typed nitrates and nitrites. in afew places (may wanta skim it for the mistakes there changed now)

you would be fine with rain water. the only problem is bacteria (bad ones) in it if its been still for to long / if its from a dirty place

rain water can be beneficial to plants as well because NO and other partials get trapped in at as it falls, just check the PH (encase its acid rain)

iv used rain water in my tank once when i needed to do a change and there was no dechlorinated water around =]

rain water has its risk's but then so does tap water if you forget to add decholo.
tap water = risk to bacteria
rain water = risk to fish (although i see it was a small risk) in both situations