Nitrogen Cycle for Aquariums / How NOT to kill all your fish with your first tank

Hey Warren! Nice to see that you're starting a tank up again. I remember you from salty forums backinnaday. Also setting up at the moment. I've dosed the new fishless planted tank with 8% ammonia(Scrubs). The level has been sitting at 0.1mg/l for 2 weeks now, which means that the cycle has not yet set in. Think it could be due to the lower temp of the water in winter. I've seeded with driftwood and plants from a pond, filter media from another tank and plants from yet another.

The only way to monitor for sure is with an ammonia test kit to start. I'm gonna get the lfs to do nitrite tests a week or so after ammonia disappears. The cool thing is that you can plant the tank in the cycle period.

 

Hey m8...thanks for the info...I like the idea of having plants straight away

 

Thanks for the information

 

This should be madetory reading before you are excepted as a member

 

Yes I also think so :top:

 

Perhaps we should change the name to "how NOT to kill all your fish with your first fish tank"? People may be more inclined to read it.

 

Do it.... I am quite surprised, how many people 'Almost' ignore tank cycling...this is my perception....I could be totally wrong.

 

Well done on changing the heading name of this thread. Very descriptive

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I'm quite surprized at how many people cycle their tanks using fish... and then panic when the fish start dying! DOF

 

Yes I agree with you Zoom.

 

Why do some people as some coarse salt to tanks and ponds on a new setup. Is this an old practise? I know my old man did it with our tanks and pond back in the day(+-15 yrs) . We would strip the hole tank down for a clean every so often, throw in the hose pipe fill up with water, add hand full of salt. Would wait couple hours and put the fish back. Never had any losses. O and no heaters either.

Was the water cleaner back then, less people in the area? Were we just lucky? I lived in a coastal town then.

Im now in the Vaal triangle and looking to start up a new tank in my entrance way, about 550l. I wiil post a thread about it later asking a few questions if i dont find the answers here.

This has been good reading.

Thanks

 

Hi @Ally , As far as I know, and anyone please correct me if i'm wrong, it will depend on what setup you have. Some aquatic plants are not tolerant of salt. One thing that is very important is to use non-iodized salt (i.e. not the normal stuff you buy in a grocery store that you will use for cooking). It must be something like coarse salt or even better marine or reef salt. As for the reason - it can be that it adds some dissolved ions Na and Cl that some believe are beneficial to fish - helping fight off disease and parasites etc. But do research on the fish species you want to keep. You would not want to add too much salt to a tank containing fish species that requires soft acidic water like discus. I think (speculate) that if the water has a few more ions in it, it affects the osmotic pressure exerted on the fish preventing them from absorbing too much harmful ions from the water. As for the cleaner water issue, I think it is more an issue of the amount of chlorine that is used in the municipal water. Anyway what type of fish did your uncle keep and what do you plan on keeping?

 

Hi Zuraki

Sorry took so long to reply, Part work, part studying (trying) and mostly lazy to type. The "Old man" is my dad, we had our tanks sometime around 1990 to 95. He had 3 Oscars. I had a mix of tropical fish,tetras, Chinese algae eater, cant really remember to much. But regarding the salt story we added it to all the tanks and the pond that had guppies and swards. We never did things like water changes or testing just cleaning filters when they got dirty and topping up the water.

Im still deciding on what to put in the tank but most likely big schools of different tetras, zebras, loach's, corys, someting little bigger too. have to look around some more. Got an idea of the scaping, hopefully it will work out. I will only get to start work on it in late November after exams. You know where i can get a custom tank built, thats my first problem.

 

There seem to be more ways to cycle a tank than there are politicians asleep in parliament. Or that's the way it sounds, reading some of the posts lately. I still believe that the best way prepare a fishtank for the arrival of your new pets is to let nature take her course the good ole fashioned way. Heck.... if you don't, you'll be missing out on all of this....

 

I certainly don't want any of those in my tanks, save for the fish themselves

 

The fish are not in the tank. I couldn't remove the last 2 attachments.

Which of the critters are dangerous?

 

I doubt any of those are dangerous but I wouldn't really want Planarians in my tank, nor the things in the second picture. And that red thing looks like a larvae of a predatory insect so those could also be harmful to small fish

 

Things in the second picture are the eggs of the thing in the fourth picture.

 

Ah, snails. That's fine I guess. I thought it was some sort of transparent blob creature

 

It has indeed helped Dale......big up!