newbie

today i bought prime, bio-spira, and a 55 gallon tank setup.

i will just use the 10 gallon setup to hold shrimp and snails for my green spotted puffer. are "pest snails" safe to feed to my fish?

i want to do it right this time. so i wont set up my tank until you guys give me the go. the guy at the lfs told me to fill the tank with tap water, add prime and wait 2 hours, add the bio-spira and he said i can add in my fish right away after i follow these steps. if this is false info let me know. i want to start right away but like i said, i will wait for your approval.

thank you for all the help btw!
 
if you read about cycling then you know when the cycling process is done. you can safely add fish after your cycling is done. so the guys at LFS was wrong and I would not follow his advise. i would also cycle your tank with brackish water. if you cnat get hold of ammonia, hanging any sort of meat in your tank until your ammonia goes will work too. (this is what i do to cycle my tank).
 
i have read about the cycling process but i have also been told that bio-spira instantly cycles a tank. correct me if i am wrong!

the gsp i plan to get is kept in freshwater as it is still 1"
 
ryanTEXAS said:
i have read about the cycling process but i have also been told that bio-spira instantly cycles a tank. correct me if i am wrong!

the gsp i plan to get is kept in freshwater as it is still 1"
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When they say "instant," it's not quite "right this second" kind of instant. Instead, it shortens the cycle to a couple of days or makes it very mild so that you don't really notice it. The bacteria still need to establish themselves inside your filter and on the surface areas of the tank decorations, etc. You should still be providing an ammonia source (pure ammonia, a piece of meat, etc) and monitoring your water conditions daily until you notice nitrates appearing, to be sure nothing goes wrong.

Also, you can dechlorinate your water that way the first time (fill it up, then add Prime, wait, then add Bio-spira) - but after that, you need to be adding Prime to the water before you put it in the tank.

i will just use the 10 gallon setup to hold shrimp and snails for my green spotted puffer. are "pest snails" safe to feed to my fish?
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Not sure what you mean by "pest snails." If they're tank-bred aquatic snails, probably so. If it's something out of the garden, probably not.
 
well i went to pets mart and the tanks were littered with them. the floor of the tank was completely covered. i asked a sales associate if i could have some and asked her how much it would be. she told me that they were free because this type of snail is bad for a tank because they reproduce to quickly.
 
The stuff all over their tanks where I live are common pond snails. They were correctly named as pests. If you are not careful with them, they will grow completely out of control in your tanks. I have some in most of my tanks but I take the necessary care to not let them breed to the point that they obscure my view of the fish. The way that makes sense to use biospira is to treat the tank as if it were in a fishless cycle but add in the biospira. When the fishless cycle looks complete, by the usual standards, then and only then is your tank cycled. Depending on how well the biospira was stored, it could be less than a week up to the usual month or even two months. You could look at it this way, you are trying to set up a tank as part of a potential lifelong hobby so you may as well start out on the right foot. A month is not much out of a lifelong hobby. So far for me it's only a 50 year hobby but who knows, it could become a lifetime in the future.
 
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