someon get me on track, i believe i've gotten ahead of myself

Take the fish back to the store. Get some test kits. Cycle the tank with either a shrimp from the grocery store or some pure ammonia for 2-4 weeks until the ammonia finally drops and the nitrates rise and then drop and then slowly add the fish.

jaydubva said:

i didn't save any of the receipts but i'll try

if i can't do that can i move them to anyother tank filled with thier same water and do what you said to the 10 gl.

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No, the problem is the filter has no established nitrifying bacteria, unless you want to do major water changes every day. Even if you cant find the receipts, take the fish back and give them to the store. Read the sticky at the top of this forum about cycling. I'm still new to this myself and I myself tortured 3 goldfish through the cycling process before I started to read this forum.

The tank has to cycle to build up beneficial bacteria that can convert toxic ammonia and nitrites into nitrates and then the nitrates need to be kept low though periodic water changes because they can be harmful if they get too high.

Get one or two raw shrimp from the grocery store, put them in the tank and wait for them to rot and turn to jelly and every few days check the ammonia level and do 20-30% water changes a couple times a week. The ammonia level will peak and when it starts to drop, check the nitrite levels which will peak and then start to drop. When the nitrite level starts to drop you should see the nitrate level start to raise a little, do a 30-40% water change and then you should be ready to add a fish or two. What you are doing here is growing good bacteria in your filter and substrate. You must have patience in this hobby to have a healthy tank to have and, most importantly, keep healthy fish.

jaydubva said:

i've heard that under gravel filters can cause alot of trouble over time, would you suggest i change that

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I am pretty new to this and have no experience with an undergravel filter but have read here that most people do not suggest using them as they tend to get clogged up. I am using 2 Whisper 10-20s on my 15 gallon tank which is 2 times the filtration needed(the more the better). These are filters that hang over the back of the tank and are fairly cheap. I think they were about 20 bucks or so each. You should be just fine with one of these.

When your tank is uncycled it will be very hard on your fish because the ammonia they produce will kill them if your not careful. Water changes will do the trick, but you've got a lot of fish for an uncycled tank. I'd recommend if you don't have the patience to do a fishless cycle to only use one hardy fish. It's hard on the fish, but with water changes it should be okay.

Okay, lets not get ahead of ourselves.

There's no need to bring the fish back, but you do have your work cut out for you. Get yourself some test kits: NH3, NO2, NO3, pH, KH (maybe GH if you feel strongly about it).

You don't need them all right away, but if you come across a master test kit that has them all, it's worth the money. In the immediate future (like today) you need NH3 and NO2.

You're looking at daily to twice dailty 50% water changes. You want to keep NH3 and NO2 levels around 0.1ppm and not much higher. Don't worry that you may change too much, as long as the fish/critters are in there, there's an ammonia source. You can do a fishy cycle without harming the fish (much), it just takes some work. The biggest advantage (okay, one of them) to fishless is that you really can't screw up. If you do, it just costs you some time. A screw-up in a fishy cycle costs money in fish.

A UGF is fine, just keep up with your gravel vacuuming and cleaning the powerhead that runs it.

Shigara, at the end of a fishless cycle, after the big water change, you fully stock, not one fish at a time. The principle of the fishless cycle is that by the end you've built up bacterial colonies far larger than necessary to deal with the ammonia produced by a full fish load. So you stock fully and the colony sizes will shrink to suit the stocking level. If you only partially stock, the colonies die down to that level then have to grow back up to meet each new addition.

happychem said:

Shigara, at the end of a fishless cycle, after the big water change, you fully stock, not one fish at a time. The principle of the fishless cycle is that by the end you've built up bacterial colonies far larger than necessary to deal with the ammonia produced by a full fish load. So you stock fully and the colony sizes will shrink to suit the stocking level. If you only partially stock, the colonies die down to that level then have to grow back up to meet each new addition.

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Thanks happy, didn't know that. Learn something new everyday.

I'm suprised that no-ones asked yet. What kind are the albino cats? If they're channel cats you need to return them. They get way too big for that tank and they can grow pretty quick. If you're not sure post a pic or give a description of them. Maybe get a few corys or something of that sort.