Got a Tank for Christmas!!

S

Slick Fork

AC Members
Dec 27, 2005
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Wild Rose Country
Hi there,

My wife bought me a 33 aquarium starter kit for Christmas and I'm looking for a little advice. I set it all up and had water at the right temperature on the 26th, now after a whole bunch of research I had decided to do a fishless cycle with it. However, my niece jumped the gun and decided to buy me 5 raspboro (sp?) tetra's as her gift to me. Not having the heart to tell her I couldn't take fish for at least a month I ended up putting them in the tank yesterday at lunch. I ran out in the afternoon, bought a test kit and some other goodies and checked all my levels at midnight last night.

My readings are as follows (after 12 hours)
PH 8.2 (This seems a little high to me, what do you guys think)
Ammonia 0
Nitrites 0
Nitrates 0
My test kit didn't include a hardness test so I have no idea what that number might be.

As far as my tank set up goes, I added a 200 GPH filter with carbon, foam, and "Bio Material" (hanging off the back) I have an under gravel filter powered by an air pump (+ a little castle that gives off a whole lot of bubbles attached to the pump) I have 2 live plants (I can't remember their name right now but the fish store guy said I'd have to work hard to kill them) and now 5 of these tetra's all smaller then 1"

Now, as far as the advice i'd like. My mother in law has a well established cold water aquarium with an undergravel filter system and some fancy goldfish in it. I was thinking about stealing some of her gravel (hopefully loaded with bacteria) and try to jump start my tank now that I have fish in it. What concerns me about doing this is the possibility of spreading diseases like Ich. Her tank has seemed healthy enough any time I've looked at it, but I am really quite new at this so I'm not sure if I'm qualified to make a call on that. Are there any precautionary measures I can take to ensure that the gravel isn't going to contaminate my tank with anything?

I'm at work right now but will be on my way home shortly so I'll check my readings again. Hopefully my wife will have picked up a jar of that gravel by the time I get there!!

Also, now that I'm doing a cycle with fish any common mistakes you guys see a lot of and could help me avoid would be great (let me know what you think about that PH level, that has me worried). And one last request would be for some ideas as to what fish you enjoy in your tank as I haven't got any definate vision for what I would like so I'm open to recommendations. I'm hoping for an active colourful tank (my wife like's angel fish and discus' but they look sort of lazy to me!!)

Anyways, I've gotta go. Thanks in advance for all your help!!

Cheers
 
I would read the stickies at the top of the forum for starters. The freshwater forum has some good ones also. Meanwhile, keep an eye on the ammonia and nitrites. Prime will neutralize anything that gets way out of hand while you're trying to cycle.. just in case you get into trouble and need to fix things in a hurry. Frequent and small water changes will help along the way. As for the pH reading, don't forget to take a reading straight from the water source so you know what you are starting with. The gravel is a good idea, as is a piece of filter medium from an established tank, to help get things moving. This should get you started. Folks will be sure to add more recommendations here.
 
If your mother in law's goldfish tank has been established for more than 6 months with no new fish or plant additions and the fish appear healthy, they probably are healthy and you pose little to no risk using some of her gravel to speed up the cycle. If you are still worried, test the water and try to keep ammonia below 0.25 (the lower the better since at your pH any detectable ammonia will be toxic to the fish) and Nitrites below 1.0. If the Nitrites go up too fast, adding salt at the rate of 2 teaspoons per gallon will help reduce the Nitrite uptake into the fish. Don't worry about adjusting the pH, 8.2 is just fine and your fish will get used to it. Regardless if you use your in law's gravel or not, the bacteria will grow in your tank and the cycle will establish itself. Good luck and enjoy your fish. If you get any problems we are always here to help.
 
I don't know if this is true but I heard that its not a good idea to mix coldwater with tropical because of parasites or some other reason. Don't know for sure though.

I wouldn't worry about those 5 rasboras generating too much ammonia or anything for a 33gallon tank. Thats an awfully big tank for 5 tiny fish, they'll be fine. I personally wouldn't even bother checking the ammonia levels that often. Maybe once every few days would suffice.

As for the plants i'd get rid of the bubbles coming out of the castle or any bubbles at all because that exchanges away the carbon dioxide thats dissolved in your water and you don't wnat to do that because the plants need it to grow well.

And as the other guy said don't play with the PH its FINE. I have to disagree with adding salt, don't bother with it.

As for the fish. Angelfish and Discus aren't very active fish sometimes they just sit still. Angelfish may try to eat your smaller fish. If you plan to keep discus, i have no personal experience with them but i've heard that you should be prepared to do daily water changes as they are sensitive.

Do you want a community tank where everybody gets along or a tank where there may be some aggressive fish?
 
Thanks for all the replies so far. Checked all my measurements again tonight and no change in anything, my PH is 8.1 at the tap so at least I know nothing in the tank is driving it up!!

I've got the tag for my plants here, they're called "Windelov", scientific name is Microsorum pteropus. They seem to be doing alright, say I was reading some of the articles on DIY CO2 pumps and thought since I was turning the air bubbles to the aquarium off, maybe I should build one of these for the plants and stick it in the castle (God knows those 5 tiny fish won't be cranking up the C02 levels in the tank anytime soon!!)

Anyways, those little fish seem quite happy, you could almost see them thinking "Wow, look at all this space!" Something really surprised me though, when I released them yesterday they were obviously quite stressed and frantic as they darted about their new home. But today as I watched them I happened to notice that they are quite a bit more colourful today. I might just be imagining things, but it seems to me when they first got into the tank they were fairly bland in colour and I really had to search for them against the natural coloured gravel layer I have. Today however they just seem "shinier" if that makes any sense. Just something I noticed at any rate!

As far as what I would like once I get this whole outfit up and running, I've decided I like fish that are really active and colourful! Aggresive fish wouldn't bother me at all, when I was younger I had a tank with some cichilids in it that I kept alive mostly by sheer luck I'm sure (I didn't even have a tenth of the limited knowledge I have today). Anyways, I liked them but found them to be quite destructive and I'm a little worried if I go to all the work and expense to put some plants in they'll just rip it up. So right now my only criteria are: Active, Colourful, and I don't want to be changing the water more than once or twice a week!

Oh, one more question. The aquaclear filter I bought recommends changing the Bio Media every three months. Now from all the reading I've been doing I've got the impression that most of the good bacteria are going to be residing in that media so wouldn't changing it out sort of defeat the purpose of having it? By swapping it out would I be forced to re-cycle my tank every three months?

Again, thanks for all the help! I sure appreciate it
 
I never change my media. You don't need to change it til its totally destroyed and un-usuable and basically not a sponge anymore. Its all a big scam to get more money out of you. This is what you can do. Have 2 sponges in your AC filter. Decide on how often you want to do maintenance on your filter. Generally once every 2 weeks is fine, unless you have a huge bio-load. What you do is at the same time that you are doing a water change DO NOT dump the water right away after you've taken it out of the tank. Take out one of the sponges and squeeze and rinse it in this old tank water that you've just removed from the tank. It should remove most of the gunk and solids and look pretty clean again. Then put it back. Alternate between the two sponges. The reason why I'm suggesting you only rinse one sponge at a time is if by some freak accident you accidentally forget and rinse the sponge in water that hasn't be de-chlorinated then you'll kill all the bacteria. If you did that with both sponges then you're screwed. I think the general consensus is that most people use this method and do not bother changing their media at all. I would continue doing this til the sponge is basically either melting/worn from use or its just so nasty and so dirty that i just want a new one.

If you decide the route of changing the sponge every 3 months then change only 1 of the 2 sponges every 3 months and you wont need to re-cycle either. But the rinsing method is a lot cheaper.

Another thing i've done is one time i had a REALLY nasty sponge that smelled like sewer (cuz i left it rotting in a bucket and forgot about it)and i just took it and rinse the crap out of it and then dunked it in bleach and water solution for a good bit and then rinsed it out really well again and then dunked it in water with lots of dechlorinator to make sure the bleach was gone.

Also for active colourful fish i recommend fancy male guppies. The males are more colourful and the reason i dont recommend females is they will breed like rabbits and you'll be overstocked eventually lol. If you want fish that are fairly colourful and a bit larger i recommend bolivian rams because they are hardy and easy to care for and not aggressive to other tank mates.
 
I bought a fancy guppy once that was one of the most beautiful I had ever seen. He had a very pretty irridescent emerald green body with a cobra type tail...the orange and black patterened ones...Gorgeous !!

But when I brought him to the checkout counter, the lady there put him on the scanner.....and then I got distracted as I was leaving the store and forgot to raise him up over the scan bar !!
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Needless to say, that beautiful guy lasted all of 3 days !! :(
 
You could go with african cichlids. Your rasboras might be big enough not to get eaten, but then again they might. most of the africans wont get any bigger than 6" and they rival saltwater when it comes to color. As for the Aqua clear filter, take out the charcoal and run 2 sponges and just rinse them out with tank water every other week and don't do anything with the white beads, leave those in indefinately.
 
Oh yeah, just to clear some stuff up for you. The aqua clear has 3 types of filter media: sponge, charcol, and big white beads. As long as you only change one of those at a time, you wont hurt your bacteria colony, so don't feel bad about taking one of your minlaw's filter media. Second, the charcoal is only good for about a week and is used mainly to get fine particles out of your water, so you may want to through it in there if your tank looks a little dirty/cloudy, otherwise just run another sponge in its place.
 
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