White stuff on glass?

[Essjay]

Or if the tank is heavily planted do a silent/plant cycle as squidneh said.

 

[Keenamoss]

If you have a lot of plants in the tank (looks like maybe you do?) you can do a silent cycle. The plants will take nutrients (like ammonia) out of the water column which will keep your water safe for fish. Using this method you just plant your tank heavily with fast growing plants - floating plants are the best for keeping water clean - and once they are healthy and growing, you can add in your first group of fish.

A silent cycle removes the need to actively cycle your tank. The people who said to use fish food to cycle the tank mean well, but if you want to actively cycle the tank you would want to use ammonia drops, not fish food, as it's more accurate. But it isn't recommended to use both plants AND add ammonia to cycle - pick either actively cycling or simply adding enough plants to maintain water quality.

ETA: bacterial blooms are common in new set ups. I'm guessing that's what's going on in your tank. Usually they resolve themselves within a few days.

Thank you for this... so really, I can just do the water changes and let the plants settle in (more plants are coming)... if they're all growing and healthy that will mean the system is working? Will that mean the levels on the tests always come up zero then, until fish are in there?

I am cycling my tiny tank again now too so that it can be like a quarantine area or sickbay, or maybe keep snails in it or something one day, but it just has fake decor - have been adding fish food, will that be OK for a 16l tank or really need to get actual ammonia?

 

[Keenamoss]

The white stuff in the tank water is likely to be a bacterial bloom.

Perfectly normal during the cycling process and will go away on its own accord during the cycle when the bacteria and tank settles.

But please do not add any chemicals other than dechlorinater / tap safe and the right amount of ammonia for the cycling process.

And please do not add food as a source of ammonia. This is a very ineffective way of adding ammonia, and there are bad side effects of adding food when there’s no livestock to eat it is planeria worms or bad water parameters. Simply not worth it.

Not sure if you’ve already read this or not but certainly worth reading and studying if you haven’t.

By chemicals you mean to adjust the ph? But fertiliser is OK?

Cycling Your New Fresh Water Tank: Read This First!

Cycling Your First Fresh Water Tank What is Cycling and Why is it Important? Fish waste, and especially fish breathing, plus uneaten food and other organic matter breaking down in a tank all produce Ammonia. This can quickly become toxic to fish if it is allowed to build up to any measurable...

www.fishforums.net

 

[Keenamoss]

Wow I don't know if I'm more or less confused lol have read about planted fishless cycling adding ammonia, not adding it, adding fish food, not adding it, one person mentioned adding urine (???) but thanks everyone for your input and efforts.... Hopefully it is a harmless normal bacteria bloom. If none of you recognise it as something terrible then that's reassuring at least.

 

[Ch4rlie]

Wow I don't know if I'm more or less confused lol have read about planted fishless cycling adding ammonia, not adding it, adding fish food, not adding it, one person mentioned adding urine (???) but thanks everyone for your input and efforts.... Hopefully it is a harmless normal bacteria bloom. If none of you recognise it as something terrible then that's reassuring at least.

There IS a lot of conflicting advice out there, we know this through our own experiences and learned things the hard way.

First off, LFS, their advice at best is to be taken with a rather large pinch of salt. Most chain store LFS staff don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to fish and fishkeeping as they are paid to sell stuff to you and have the most basics of guidelines to follow but their advice not to be relied on at all, there are some staff who do know fishkeeping but generally speaking those are few and far between.

LFS owners tend to just want to sell you their products and will say just about anything to make you buy their stuff.

But there are some decent privately owned LFSs to be fair but it’s knowing the good from the bad LFS for inexperienced fish keepers is the tricky part.

However, this forum is pretty good for giving good advice and there are experienced fish keepers on here who are more than happy to help you out with advice that are to the benefit of the livestock and tanks.

I was a newbie just like you at one point and came on here not knowing whose advice to trust or what I should do etc etc and I am so glad I became a member of TFF and quickly learned advice from here is actually pretty good for the freshwater aquarium fish and plants.

By the way, welcome to the forum and I hope you enjoy it here

 

[Keenamoss]

Thanks it actually reminds me of when I was pregnant and reading all the baby books/joining all the forums and taking in all the advice and EVERYONE, retailers and medical professionals and mothers to boot have experiences and opinions and ideas and methods ranging across the entire spectrum haha.

I went to like all of the aquarium shops on my side of town this wknd and yes, the independent ones were still retailers pushing products but at least I got a sense that they knew what they were talking about because they'd been doing the fish thing and helping others do it too for a long time.

 

[Keenamoss]

Though they also told me to add chemicals to my tank (which they sold me) for my ph as much as possible lol.

 

[squidneh]

Thank you for this... so really, I can just do the water changes and let the plants settle in (more plants are coming)... if they're all growing and healthy that will mean the system is working? Will that mean the levels on the tests always come up zero then, until fish are in there?

I am cycling my tiny tank again now too so that it can be like a quarantine area or sickbay, or maybe keep snails in it or something one day, but it just has fake decor - have been adding fish food, will that be OK for a 16l tank or really need to get actual ammonia?

Yes, the reason you want to wait for the plants to settle in and show signs of growth is because plants will only improve water quality if they are healthy and growing. If they're dying, then they will actually worsen your water quality, so it's best to wait until everything is happy and growing before you add fish, to be safe. This is also why fast growing plants like floating plants are most helpful - the faster they grow, the more they take from the water column, and thus the better your quality of water. Theoretically if you only have plants, your tests should be 0. However you should test your tap water as well, because some people have ammonia straight out of the tap.

If you are only planning to use the smaller tank for a quarantine/sickbay, I would put a smaller secondary filter in yout larger tank. By doing this it will grow beneficial bacteria, so that if you need to use your smaller tank, you can add water to that tank and then put in the smaller, already cycled second filter. It's a lot of work to keep an empty take cycled for an extended period of time. If you want to house invertebrates (snails, shrimps, etc) in it then you should either swap to live plants like the larger tank, or purchase ammonia for the cycling process. Using fish food is an outdated and risky way to cycle a tank as it's very innaccurate and can lead to dirty water.

I should also mention that if you are going to cycle with ammonia you need a good test kit. API master test kit is the most commonly used and a trusted kit.

 

[Keenamoss]

Awesome, thank you.