siliconmaster

Hi,
I've purchased a used tank that came with 10 fishes. I cleaned the tank, filled it with water and now am ready to start the nitrogen cycle. The only problem is that I can not find Bio-Spira anywhere locally to speed up the process. Currently the fishies are living in a 2.5gal bucket in the eco system from the previous tank which I hope is stable. The fishes I have in there are: 4 mollies, 2 chubby gold fishes, 1 angel fish, 1 cat fish and 1 beta. My question is how long can I keep them in there safely? Is there anything I can do to make sure they don't die on me while the tank is cycling. Please reply if anyone can help me.
Thank you

COBettaCouple

how big is the tank that they came with? i'd recommend putting the betta in a tank in the 2.5g to 5g range by himself (eventually the angel will probably kill the betta and be at risk of a lot of damage himself) and the other fish in the community tank. If you can find Prime, treat all the water with that and use it always. Without BioSpira, it's a guarantee the fish will die long before the cycle is complete, so you'll need to do a with-fish cycling. Using Prime can help keep the water from getting toxic on the fish during the cycling process and just keep up with daily water changes of 25% as much as you can.

If the filter sponge from that tank and/or the gravel stayed wet, you may have good bacteria there that you could use to 'seed' the new tanks and speed the cycle along some.

siliconmaster

The tank is 20 gallons. I filled it with plain tap water a day ago and added the recommended dose of Cycle by Nutrafin, added Tetra Aqua's aquasafe water conditioner to treat the chlorinated water and correct amount of salt. I understand that there isn't enough healthy bacteria in the new tank but I had no choice as I did not want the other 10 fishes to die, so this way hopefully some of them will survive. Unfortunately I had no luck with the filter bacteria as the previous owner did not use it much and the bacteria in there would of probably been dead anyways so I bought a new Marineland penguin 350 bio-wheel filter. I will try to find Prime. Is the only difference in Prime vs the stuff made by Tetra Aqua is that it removes ammonia? I migrated the fishes from their previous "bucket" habitat using the floating bag method and they seem to be ok for now. The cat fish at first was swimming around like crazy but then it came down. I gave them a little food to see if they would eat and they all ate well except for the catfish and the angel fish, not sure if that's normal.
I tested the quality of the water and here is what I got: Nitrate: was at first 5 then after adding fish came up to 10. Nitrite: 0. Total hardness: 300. Total chlorine: 0. Alkalinity: 170 which states that it's ideal and the pH level was high though at 8. I will purchase the pH decreaser tomorrow and add it. How often should I be adding the Cycle stuff? On the box it says every 7 days for 2 weeks. Should I follow those directions or use it more often? Oh and I also purchased an Ammonia alert reader and it says the ammonia level is safe in there. Should I not run the filter in the tank 24/7 as it is a very powerful one or is it ok? Thanks in advance for the help.

COBettaCouple

yea, the prime is a nicely concentrated conditioner that also locks up toxins. I'd test for ammonia, the alerts are nice but don't give you an exact number.. the API liquid tests are the most accurate. I'd run the filter all the time. I've not had angels, but i've always had the cats act hyper at first.. they're the most sensitive to water conditions.

As far as Cycle goes.. we used it at first, added it every week, got a big bottle of it. Then found out that it really doesn't help a tank cycle, but creates more of a series of mini-cycles that require more cycle to continue. So even with a big bottle almost full, we stopped using it and recommend the same to other new tank owners. The only products that i know of that truely help the cycle are BioSpira (for sure) and Zymbac-FW (helps some).

siliconmaster

It is 24 hours after I've released the fish to the new tank. So far no fish has died yet and hopefully none will. Just a few hours ago I added the pH down solution following the directions. I have checked the pH water level twice and it seems to stay same as yesterdays tests, right around 8. I do not understand if I am supposed to wait a certain amount of time to detect it or if I need to add more. I've added 40 drops to a 20gal tank. The catfish started swimming crazy again after adding the pH down so I'm guessing the habitat changed somewhat and I do not want to add too much so I don't cause any problems. Happy to say though that after adding the pH down the angel fish started to swim around to the top and was able to eat pretty well. Before it would just stay at the right bottom portion of the tank, right by the heater. I also took out the one beta fish and put it in a breeding net in the same 20gal tank so not sure if that had anything to do with it. Although I've noticed the beta and the angel always seem to bump into each other and be a little hostile where as the other fish are just fine. The catfish though is being a total bully and pushing the angel around as it pleases, hope he comes down eventually.
I have tested the ammonia level and it is very good (0.1ppm) considering I added 11 fishes all at once. Could this be because I've got a powerful filter in there? Here are my other today's test results: Nitrate: 10 (stayed the same); Nitrite: .2 (went up from 0); Hardness: 300 (same; anything I can do to bring that down); Chlorine: 0 (same); alkalinity: 170 (same); pH: 8.
What does it affect when I cycle the tank 25% at this point? I did not understand that part. Does it just need to be changed if I've got high amounts of chlorine in there and other toxins when the tank is being cycled? Please if some one could please explain that to me I would appreciate it. I am keeping the temperature at around 76.5 - 77 degrees.
I also ordered the Bio-Spira and should have it by the weekend. What should I do with it at that point? How much should I add if any and how often? It will be 5 days after the setup. Not sure if it matters but I've got around 25lbs of gravel, some fake plants, a nice size log for fishes to hide in and 3 shells. This all came with the original tank and I have not added anything new but I did wash them with hot water because they were very slimy from previous owner.
Again, thanks for the help. I would really like to see these fishes survive and will do everything I can to make that happen.

COBettaCouple

Bettas and Angels are both quite territorial. Angels are pretty aggressive at times also, being cichlids. It's really best not to have air-labryinth fish and cichlids in the same tank. Usually, the Betta is the one to die when the angel gets bigger.

Fish have a surprising ability to adapt to pH levels and we no longer try to 'fix' our high pH. If you can safely and slowly lower the pH, I don't see a problem with that.. but pH changes can be very hard on fish, even if it's a good change or if the pH goes up & down & up & down a lot. I'd follow the bottle instructions and discontinue using it at the first sign of problems.
The cat should calm down when it adjusts to the water chemistry change, but as you know they're super-touchy to any changes.

Your tap water treatment (prime, aquasafe, etc) should remove the chlorine, chlorminies and other heavy metals. the nitrogen cycle is best explained here: http://www.fishlore.com/NitrogenCycle.htm. Changing 25% of the water is fine when you're cycling with fish and we weekly change 25% of the water in our tanks, even the cycled ones.
I would bump the temp up to around 80.. right now, it's a little on the cool side for the angel & betta.

The BioSpira will be great, it should have your tank cycled inside of 24 hours. Just follow the directions on the package exactly and you shouldn't have to do anything else for it to do the trick on your tank. It's good to clean stuff with hot water, we just either dry it well before adding it to the tank or after adding it to the tank, we treat the tank with Prime for the tank volume to be safe. Clean the gravel over & over & over to get all the dust off it that you can. when you add it to the tank, expect a major cloudiness to occur from the gravel dust. It's enough that I'd move the fish to a big container of tank water prior to adding gravel (also to help prevent the chance of injury to the fish).

siliconmaster

I have a question about Bio-Spira because it seems there aren't a lot of instructions out there on how to use it. I purchased the product which was big enough for 90gal tank, mine is only 20. I used a little less than half about a week ago and I think it worked. Now I need to do a 25% water change and I was wondering if I could use the rest of it? And which product can I use instead of bio-spira in the future after the water changes? Bio-spira is just not easily available for me and costs a lot to get it shipped. Please help. Thanks

COBettaCouple

once your tank is cycled, you shouldn't need a product like biospira again as long as it stays cycled. do you have a testing kit like the api master FW kit? you want to check for readings of 0 on ammonia and nitrites and 10 or less on nitrates. honestly, i don't think it would hurt to put the rest of the biospira in, but if the tank is cycled now, it won't do a lot -- of course it never hurts to have more good bacteria and it beats tossing it.

siliconmaster

I have all the test kits I could ever need for this fish tank. The ammonia level is at 0 and nitrates are below 10. So when I do the 25% water change do I add anything at all to it, besides the correct amount of water conditioner and salt? Do I need to add any kind of fish tank cycling additives since I'm adding fresh water to it?
Do the fish like to have the florescent light on for a short period of time? We had to leave for 3 days and gave them one of those 3 day food pyramid things but the light was off and when we came back and turned the tank light on (it was dark) it seemed like the fish were all out of it. After about an hour they all came alive and were back to normal (with the light on). Are those pyramid food things any good?

COBettaCouple

we only add water conditioner to our tap water. your tank sounds good and cycled.. once a tank is cycled, a partial water change won't un-cycle it. the good bacteria is in your filter sponge or biowheel and your substrata. Only a VERY small amount is in the water.

fish like a day/night cycle. it's 'normal' to their bodies.. sometimes when a light comes on, your fish will be asleep and some are like a person who hits the snooze 5 times - they just take a bit to get going in the morning.

i've not tried a food pyramid myself so i wouldn't be a good source of info on that. you could post a new thread asking about that in our food forum in the freshwater section.

siliconmaster

Thank you for all your help. It's been over a month since I got the tank and everything was normal until today. We were gone for 2.5 days and when came back home one of our gold fish was completely decomposed and the white spine cord along with what was left of the head was being sucked at by the intake of the filter. This wasn't one of the tiny gold fish, he was about 2 inches long. Really stumped as to how this could happen. Could he have been eaten by the cat fish or lets say he died day one could he decompose completely in 2 days? How long does it take for a fish to decompose like that? My fish tank consists of 1 adult size angel, 4 guppies, 2 chubby goldies, 2 (now 1) gold fish (kinda looked like rosy barb) and 1 cat fish that's about 3.5 inches long. One thing I should mention about the goldie that died is that they were very active. The probably ate most of the food from the bottom of the tank and didn't leave much for the cat fish.
The water levels are ok. Nitrates are at 15 but I assume it's because of the dead fish. I really am sad to see him gone because he was one of our first fishes we ever got even before we got this tank. All your help is appreciated.

COBettaCouple

once a fish dies, you'd be surprised at how fast the others will clean the tank of the dead fish and it's also possible that some bits of that fish was sucked up into the filter if it died and was stuck in the intake for a while. i don't know if he got attacked or died, it's really going to be impossible to tell. the angel might have gone after him as they can get aggressive, but usually they are more prone to that when buddied up or mating, so it's probably more likely that he died of something suddenly and the rest happened after he was gone. we're sorry for your loss and wish we had a definite answer, but can only give the best possibility. yea, an ammonia spike would be most likely from a dead fish and nitrates could have gone up as the cycle processed that.

siliconmaster

What should I do about the water filter? I have 2 cartridges in there and I've just changed one of them 3 days ago. Should I also replace the other one since it's been there for several weeks and clean out the feces and what's left of the dead fish or let it be?

COBettaCouple

what i'd do is put the sponge in a bowl of tank water and clean out the filter assembly basically, using a big bowl and lots of treated tap water to do the cleaning, never any untreated water. just to get out any fish parts.. clear out the intake tube.. but you wouldn't really need to get it totally spotless.. just a precaution in case it was some sort of disease and you want to keep the tank cycled.