I'm a newbie and i need help

[Denton]

I just set up my 55 gal tank the other day and i have a couple of questions.

First off....my water is green. How can i get rid of this? What happened was , I had a log (branch..whatever) in my tank, but it wasn;t anchored down very well. So when i woke up the log was floating on top of the water right under the lights. So my tank now smells like zoowater and has a green tint to it. I took this log out and will soon be putting something in it's place.

Next question: I've filled the tank, got all my equipment running bought the nessary equipment...now what? What should i do before i put in fish? How long should i wait?

Those are my basic questions. Thanks

[sigmatauntaylor]

you AT LEAST need to wait 24 hrs before you add fish to let the dechlorinator work, then you could either do fishless cycling by adding ammonia or trying to cycle with fish but doing so well under stocked 1/2 capacity or less, preferabbly less to not stress the fish as much. As to the green water i assume it was something in the log! Might want to wait till it subsides to add fish

[TKOS]

Do some water changes to get rid of the green water. Then as was mentioned you can do a fishless cycle or a fishy cycle. Either way I suggest you read the sticky at the top of the newbie forum. There is lots of good info that will help you avoid many of the common problem of setting up a new tank and hopefully avoid the loss of your fish.

[prerunnedyota]

Also if u didnt want to wait for the cycling you could use bio-spira and put fish in right after u put that in i did that with my tank and everything worked fien the only down side is the added cost to buy it.

[NGerdes]

If you haven't put any fish or plants or anything alive in the tank, I would empty all of the green water out of the tank, or most of it at least. Just get rid of it, start over fresh. Wait for the water to dechlorinate like sigmatauntaylor said and go on with a fishless cycle. No use waiting and doing numerous partial changes if you don't have anything alive in there. When you refill without the log, you will know if it is the cause of your water discoloration...

[Denton]

Thanks for the replies....ive been thinking about it overnight and i am going to changing out the water. The greeness scares me a bit. I'll read that newbie help ASAP

[JSchmidt]

Just a note of clarification: dechlorinator does not take 24 hours to work, nor does it require overnight to do its thing. It works pretty much instantly. Many experienced fishkeepers do partial water changes, even at large volumes, by adding dechlorinator to the tank at the same time as the water.

If your water has plain chlorine in it (not chloramine), you can let it sit out for 24 hours and the chlorine will offgas on its own, without dechlorinator. If you're not sure whether your water has chlorine or chloramine, you can either call your water utility or just use dechlorinator.

HTH,
Jim