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miller30
26-Apr-12, 22:31
Have just purchased a tropical fish tank! Have followed all the instructions and am letting my water settle before adding any fish. Any advice on this topic welcomed

Dadie
26-Apr-12, 22:40
Get some water from an already set up tank so it cycles faster!
It gives the filters the useful bugs to help settle out the water peaks and troughs for when you add your 1st fish.
Add any plants now...sparsely as they will grow...and it would be great to remove any pesky snails before fish are in the tank!
Only add 1 or 2 fish to start and give them a good couple of weeks before adding more..
Get a decent kit for testing the water and a thermometer and enjoy!

Koi
28-Apr-12, 00:29
Because your tank is brand new if you can get some filter media of a friend from their filter it will help greatly through the nitrogen cycle. Nitrogen cycle can be rough to get through so your first fish must be hardy ones. what will happen is ammonia will get silly high and you must combat it with daily 20 to 40 per cent water changes. Nitrite is next and in small doses it kills so again regular water changes. Please do go to pets at home and buy yourself a bottle of nutrafin cycle. they have big 375 ml bottles in atm for the price of 250 ml. this alone will help greatly to get your filter up to shape. The product has biological bacteria which the filter needs to work and it will eat through nitrite and ammonia turning them into something harmless. With regular water changes, nutrafin cycle and hardy couple of fish to start of with for the first 6-8 weeks you'll be sorted. Smaller tanks are prone to peeks of ammonia and nitrite poisoning as they tend to be a bit unstable but bigger tanks tend to be more stable. As an example i have a 4 foot tropical tank and there is never a peek in ammonia when a fish dies as my two filter work well together and filter system is very mature.
You need tapsafe to treat the water so its safe for the fish. Always make sure the water is treated before you put it in your tank.
I've found aside from Angie the staff in pets at home aren't very knowledgable when it comes to fish. I was never told about the nitrogen cycle and when i asked they couldn't tell me much. I ended up learning the hard way but have a few extremly hardy fish now due to it.
Also i wouldn't recomend buying fish from pets at home. The tanks they keep them in are too small, the stress of the journey causes them to be off colour and they are put up for sale very quickly after getting them in.
I'm actually going to be placing an order with a company called petsmania in orkney. I've spoken to them 3 times and discussed fish options, prices, deliver etc. Everytime i've phoned i have talked with a staff member who is knowledgable and answered all my questions and more. I do know a fair bit but not as much as some people. I would class myself as an ametur in fishkeeping. Going to be £10 deliver on the boat to scrabster. I've yet to find out if you have to go on the boat to collect or do they bring it out but thats on the agenda tomorrow. The staff were very honest and told me they keep the fish in quarrantine for 4 days before going up for sale.
I would say tomorrow get yourself to pets at home and buy tapsafe(if you haven't already got it) and nutrafin cycle.
Plan your fish wisely. You must think about how big a fish will get when you are weighing them up for an option. Your average teeny weeny angelfish in pets at home will grow bigger than your hand, a silver shark can grow to 20cm and most tanks aren't big enough for one. Guppies and tetras can only be kept with certain fish. Certain loaches have to be on their own. Some catfish will grow huge! Basically do your homework and go in with a plan of what you want. Never ever impulse buy. Some very brightly coloured fish have been dyed so its always best to be wary of them. The dye makes them weaker fish and its only done because colour sells.....such a shame on the fish.
Another thing is to have a spare heater!! I'm thankfull that i always have a spare as i went away on a day trip to ness a couple of months back and came back to a cold tropical tank and the fish in it at deaths door. It was a small 30l hospital tank that the heater element had packed in. My partner replaced half of the water with warm water and i whipped out another heater. The fish didn't die then but it did a couple of weeks later. This scared me into ordering a spare heater for our 4 foot tank.

miller30
28-Apr-12, 07:53
Thank you very much for the information lots of useful stuff!!!! Will do lots more reading up!!! Got 2 tetras for the tank now and they seem fine so far! How long would you recommend doing the daily changes for? And have u got an email/web adress for the company in Orkney? Do u take out your media in the bottom and clean it? Or do u just use one of those plastic pump things? Thanks

Koi
28-Apr-12, 18:59
This is petmania's facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/PetmaniaOrkney there contact details is on their page.
I wouldn't take your substrate out of the tank. Use the plastic gravel cleaner. You can use it as you do a water change. I clean my substrate when i have to clean out the whole tank which is not often. Likely last time was when we bought it 9 months ago. We moved it from one corner of the room to the other side about 5 months ago and left enough water in to keep my biggest angel happy. Moved the tank very slowly between 4 adults as well. With the previous tank we cleaned it all out when we had an outbreak of brown snails. Had to scald the tank and clean everything throughly to get rid of them!
I normally do a daily 20 per cent water change everyday for 2 weeks while going through the nitrogen cycle. This seems to stop peeks of ammonia and nitrite getting silly high.
Best to get a testing kit so you can monitor nitrite and ammonia levels. Once the nitorgen cycle is complete a 20 per cent water change once a week or once a fortnight like i do, keeps Nitrate away and keeps the water fresh. Nitrate occurs in "old" water. There are products that you can use to stop it occuring but a 20 per cent water change once a week or once a fortnight does the trick.

Dadie
30-Apr-12, 22:51
I do 10% water changes once a week ..more sends my tank haywire with Ph probs!
Think it is due to the Ph of the new water sometimes rather than the old water...
And the gravel has only been cleaned/flushed out properly once in about 4 years..we only use the siphon which if you submerge totally in the water and put the thick end down into the substrate and your thumb over the thin end until you get in in the lower bucket ...you dont have to do the sook and guess method!...saved a lot of mouthfulls of fishtank water knowing that trick....didnt tell hubby for ages how I managed not to get a mouthfull of tank water as it was too funny to watch when he was doing the water changes:D
Oh only use one bucket labelled for fish/tank etc for them as chemical residues from cleaning stuff etc is harmful to fish ...so have dedicated fish stuff kept and labelled away from your cleaning stuff is a really good idea!
polystyrene sheets or bubblewrap is handy to have on stand by for powercuts to keep the temp up..once the tank is settled with the nitrate/ph.ammonia the filter/air bubbler is ok for a couple of days kaput but the tank should be recieving more frequent water changes..but temp has to be kept within range...and only slow changes are tollerated by fish ..so if heater has gone or powercut the temp shouldnt be raised by 0.1 deg at any one time...this is also important when doing water changes!