Tuesday 24 April 2012

Fish Shopping!

We went out on Saturday and on Sunday, a little worse for wear but entirely committed to the cause, we changed 90% of the water in the 125l tank (as well as doing five buckets in the 200l and two in the 65l) and went out in search of fish!

...And came home a few hours later with these guys:



6 x five banded barbs, and 8 x rummynose tetras.

We wanted some which would be compatible with our female krib, however it was evident from the off that she just wasn't going to let anyone share her tank, and the new guys cowered in the corner, so we've had to offer her up for re-homing. At the moment she is on her own in what is supposed to be our hospital tank. This means we still need to decide who's going in the tank with the barbs and tetras but there is no rush.

When we got them in the tank they all just hid away at the back and we couldn't see them at all, so a day later we decided to up the numbers slightly. We also added a few young guppies from the 65l (I think they are male but it's hard to tell!) so that the thing wouldn't look so empty!

Unfortunately, the only place we could get fish after work hours was the local Pets at Home, where we got four more tetras who have settled in OK and are shoaling with the others who seem much more confident now. However they had one single five banded barb; very stupidly I felt sorry for him and bought him, and unfortunately he doesn't seem to be doing well. I've also noticed now that he appears to have a white spot on him, I am not sure if it is ich, as it doesn't look the same as what I have seen before, as it hasn't spread however I have dosed the tank just in case which means we won't be adding anyone else for the time being.

More photos coming soon!

Friday 20 April 2012

Thursday & Friday (Days 10 & 11)

Quick update (no pics today haha!).

Yesterday (day 10) I had a strange mix of results. I have seen no ammonia at all, but the nitrite was a  a bit odd.


Before work (11.5 hrs after re-dosing) the nitrite was the highest it has been - between 2 and 5! :crazy: Perhaps I put too much ammonia in?? :unsure: 


I re-dosed anyway before work and then measured again when I came home at one hour intervals (my husband has gone away and I was bored!).


The results were 7pm 0.5-1, 8pm 0.25, 9pm 0. 
Then I re-dosed. 


This morning at 8.30 (11.5 hours after re-dosing) I'm getting double 0s.


So now I just need to re-dose it and tomorrow or Sunday I will drain the water and go FISH SHOPPING :D Hurrah!

Wednesday 18 April 2012

Added fishy bonus!

Thought I would take a few pictures of my fish to share...

Boffer  the powder blue dwarf gourami looking quizzical. I don't think he's particularly intelligent, even for a fish.

Action shot! You can see the zebra danios whizzing around in the background. The all seem to be gravid at the moment. Oh, and boff pigging out as usual.

Boffer chasing his girlfriend. Sometimes she quite likes him, other times like today she plays hard to get!

Tuesday & Wednesday (Days 8 & 9)

Get ready for this people, it's a rollercoaster of emotion ;)


Tuesday, 7.45am (12hrs after re-dosing) - 0 ppm Ammonia and 0.5ppm Nitrite
Tuesday, 6.15pm,  10hrs 30 mins after re-dosing Ammonia. Ammonia 0, Nitrite  between 0 and 0.25 and  Nitrate around 5.

Tuesday 1t 10.15pm, four hours after re-dosing. 1.5ppm Ammonia , Nitrite 1ppm

And today's results.... *DRUMROLL PLEASE*

Firstly, a thought for the poorly zebra danio which got stuck behind the filter, who has now gone to fishy heaven. RIP little buddy. He was one of only two men against six lady danios ,probably stuck himself to the filter in sheer exasperation. There is only so much procreating you can attempt.

But on a lighter note...

At 7.50am, the results were much like yesterday...

L - 0 Ammonia and 0 Nitrite results from a fully cycled tank for comparison
R Ammonia, Nitrite and  Nitrate tests from this tank. Nitrite between 0 and 0.25 again...
So I re-dosed...and this evening...

Ta-da! Double 0s!
Now I have re-dosed and I'll keep doing so for the next few days to make sure it's not a fluke... Fingers crossed! Now I have to put some real thought to stocking :S

So far I have decided on a krib or kribs, and five banded barbs... However what I go out with the intention of getting and what I actually come back with may be two very different things!

Monday 16 April 2012

Monday (Day 7)

So 7.45am the results looked like this...
0.25 Ammonia
0.25 Nitrite
So I re-dosed 6ml and 12 hours later at 7.45pm I have:

That's absolutely no ammonia, and just trace nitrites (<0.25). Hooray!
Time to re-dose and hopefully over the week I'll see nitrites at a big sky blue 0 after 12 hours. Then with any luck I will be ready for fishies this weekend or the next. The great thing about cycling this way (with no fish) is that you can add them all at once and it won't overload the filter because a tank full of fish won't produce 4ppm ammonia, so the filter will be able to cope.

Now I just have to decide which fish I want!

Sunday 15 April 2012

Sunday night update

Well it has been a miserable Sunday, and rather than go out and do anything worthwhile I've spent a lot of it just relaxing and watching my fish. Not a bad way to spend the day really!

I've also been researching what will go into my new tank when it's up and running. So far I like the look of five-banded barbs and a pair of kribs, however it depends how long I have to go because I may well change my mind!

So because I bet you're dying to know, I have been testing my water throughout the day and I can reveal the results:
L-R - 10.30am immediately after re-dose to 4ppm, 4.5 hours later at 3pm (around 3ppm), 8.5 hours after re-dosing at 7pm  at 2ppm and then finally at 9pm, 10.5 hours after the re-dose at 1ppm.
You can see for yourself! Isn't it pretty.
Nitrite is about 0.25 and has remained there all day. Nitrate is  about 10-20ppm, it's difficult to tell in this light.

I have added another 3/4ml of my favourite household ammonia which should bring it back up to the 4ppm level, as I am not sure I will be able to tomorrow morning.

Well, I am sure you will agree that's quite enough excitement for one day!

A few fishy pics!

..To take my mind off the cycling process, here are some photos of the fish in my Roma 200:

The majestic King Boffer - Powder Blue Dwarf Gourami



Peekaboo!


Here's Boffer's girlfriend with a platy and a few guppies

A guppy gupping about
And another

And another. This one is Zoe. Yes, I know he's a male.

My first surviving platy fry - who is completely fearless when it comes to competing for food
 
He'll even compete with King B

Some peppered cories

 

Sunday (Day 6)

So at 10am I re-tested and the results of the API test looked like this:

Ammonia and Nitrite Test - both looking very near 0
Hurrah! This is definitely going in the right direction. In actual fact the Ammonia result looked more like 0.25 to me than 0 - but that's still around 4ppm ammonia converted to nitrate in under a day. The filter media from my other tank, even though it was just a small bit, clearly worked, - or maybe there was some bacteria left in the old filter. Having the temperature so high has clearly sped things along too. You couldn't do that in a fish-in cycle now could you!

Still no nitrites - which is odd but I am not complaining!

Re-dosed 6ml of the stinky ammonia:

Looks like we're back up to 4ppm!
Two days ago, I found a zebra danio stuck behind the filter in my Roma 200. I have no idea how he got there but he was completely vertical and properly wedged in. I freed him and he swam off, but stuck to the same spot. He looked pretty beaten up and very unhappy so yesterday I decided to move him to the hospital tank so he could recuperate with a bit of TLC. This hospital tank, a small 20l Arcadia Arc, had been housing some guppy fry so I decided they were big enough and ugly enough to look after themselves in the big wide world of the 65l tank... Here they are swimming around around in their new home this morning, wondering where their food is no doubt!


Here they are with who I'm assuming is mum swimming around in the foreground.


At the moment they all look like girls however I am sure that they can't be; I will have to keep a very careful watch on them and see if any of them develop gonopodiums or we could have a population explosion. Maybe an expert would be able to tell by now but these are my first lot of fry and I am not an expert on sexing very young guppies... but I probably need to become an expert quickly because I don't want too many more!

Saturday 14 April 2012

Saturday (Day 5)

Hurrah! Tested for ammonia this morning and it had gone down to 0.25 :good: 
Re-dosed 5ml to get it back to 4ppm. Hopefully this is a sign that things are moving in the right direction... Will test again later to make sure. Strangely not a lot of nitrite, not quite 0 but not yet 0.25ppm - is it perhaps possible that more of the nitite-eating bacteria was transferred over in the filter media? Or is it just getting started... I will keep testing and see.


Stocking plans at the moment are a single Kribensis, a nice shoal tetras of some description (suggestions?), a pair of rams and a bottom dweller/dwellers to be decided...


Just as an aside I love my little bristlenose (Mr Bristles). He is so different to our clown plec, who is great to watch but hides away for most of the time. Bristles is out day or night sucking away at the glass or fighting off other much bigger fish for algae tablets - and he's only an inch or so long! Here he is admiring his reflection on his first day in the tank!


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6.30pmJust done another test and the ammonia is already down to 1ppm (6.30pm). I will leave it overnight and re-dose tomorrow if it goes below 0.5. There are some nitrites, although they are below 0.25 so perhaps some of the bacteria did survive after all! Nitrates have gone up to 10-20ppm (difficult to see in this light!) so obviously the bacteria are working hard.
9.30pmDid another test (I was bored!) and it appears that ammonia is now at 0.5ppm! That's from 4ppm to 0.5 in 12 hours. I won't re-dose but leave it for tonight and check in the morning. Still no substantial nitrite (<0.25).
Here are the ammonia tests from last night, this morning, earlier this evening and just now, and two nitrite tests:


And here are the most recent tests with the test strips (you can tell I have only just bought a digital camera can't you!):


Fingers crossed for tomorrow morning!

Tuesday - Friday (Days 1 - 4)

I am starting this journal to document my new tank doing its fishless cycle. This journal is primarily for my own sanity however I would love to have your comments or suggestions on stocking, planting, decor or the cycling process! 

I am using the API Freshwater Master test kit to test for Ammonia, Nitrites and Nitrates and ordinary Household Ammonia from homebase to cycle the tank.

By way of introduction, these are my current tanks:

Fluval Roma 200
This one has sand substrate (with a few stray pieces of red and grey gravel which was a terrible experiment!). Lots of bogwood, lots of plants. One cheeky male powder blue dwarf gourami, affectionately named King Boffer, who seems to know exactly when the camera is on him!
The Fluval Roma 200

As well as King B and his girlfriend (pictured below...), it's home to some male platies, male guppies, zebra danios, cardinal tetras, peppered cories and a baby bristlenose.


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A bit of a blur!

65l
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Please forgive the floating plants, I think my plec has been uprooting!
This one has a cat litter substrate, and bogwood/mopani wood 'cave'. There are also lots of plants, some of which appear to be floating - oops! This one is the first tank we bought and we are now using it as a 'room divider'. There is a background on the far end but you can see right through the long side and it doesn't seem to have changed the behaviour of the fish - although this picture does look pretty bare! It's home to a few lady guppies, a few lady platies, a shoal of 8 inquisitive pygmy cories and one grumpy and rather elusive clown plec:

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Go away, this is my cave.
And, finally, this is the new tank.
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Fluval Roma 125
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It's a Fluval Roma 125 which came second hand with a 3d 'rock' background and rather than take it out, I decided to go with it and use it as a theme. I've added black sand and some decorative rocks (two hollow, two real) which I already had, but had taken out of the other tanks in favour of wood. There is also some wood and a spawning hut which have been taken out of de-commissioned tanks. These are by no means permanent, they're just there because they have no where else to go!There are a few plants in there which couldn't be squeezed in elsewhere but no where near as many as I am hoping to have eventually.

Tuesday (day 1) We set it up, filled up with some old tank water and some dechlorinated water, turned on the filter (also second hand - seemed to be soggy but doesn't appear the bacteria have survived) and chucked in some fish food.

Wednesday (day 2) Put in the sand and decor. I got some ammonia from homebase, and in the evening ammonia was measuring 0.5 so dosed up to 4/5ppm (5ml). Whacked the temp up to 31.5 degrees.

Thursday (day 3)After doing a weekly water change on the Roma 200, I took some of the filter media our and swapped it in to the 125 however there are a few new additions in the larger tank and I didn't want to take too much and risk an ammonia or nitrite spike. I will monitor both closely to see if i can take more next week. I also took the media out of a Fluval Edge which we shut down, however there was only a single fish in there so I can't imagine that did much. 

Friday (day 4)8.30am - still no change - Ammonia at 4ppm, Nitrite :sad: Doesn't look like the media did anything at all.