Originally Posted by SALEH

Good day all

First of all, I want to thank every one of you in this wonderful & amazing Forum. Honestly, you should be thanked for all the efforts and the support you give to help and assist us "Newbie" in this hobby.

As it's my first post, I'll introduce myself to you, if you never mind:

Saleh from the Middle East – KSA "Kingdom of Saudi Arabia", a Banker working with HSBC group as a Credit Analyst.

Being interested in Tropical fish, visiting all the local fish stores and enjoying watching there aquariums, I decided to start up my own aquarium, WOW. But the mane problem we are facing her in KSA that we don’t have any experts in fish keeping, even the owners and the workers in the pets shops, all of the worker are a cheap labor came from India and mostly from Bangladesh without any experience in this field. Also here we can't find special shops for fish, only six pet shops with a small fish sections. How much poor we are.

So, I searched the market to find a suitable and a good looking aquarium "Fresh water tank" and I ends up with a 55 US Gallons with an under gravel filter along with a power head attached to it to pump the water from the bottom of the aquarium to a long box attached on top of the aquarium filed with a special kind of cotton/fiber "they call it filter" with ceramic rings and a small carbon bag to enable the water to go thru the above mentioned and falls back into the aquarium water from the another said. After that, I put some decoration with a plastic plants, filled it with water, added a water conditioner and ran it for three full days "72 hours", I weren't aware of the Nitrogen cycle or the fishless water cycling nether the Ammonia , Nitrite, Nitrate, GH and KH measurement . Unfortunately, I bought so many fish and I put them into the tank, the fish are:

- Around 40 Guppies.
- 10 Dwarf Gourami.
- 10 Neon Tetra.
- 10 Zebra Danio.
- 2 Red Tail Shark.
- 2 Rainbow Shark.
- 2 Pleco (3" each).
- 2 Corydoras Catfish.
- 8 XL Mollies.
- 3 Platy.
- 5 Angelfish (3 small & 2 medium).
- 5 Barbs.

Total of 99 fish, OMG!!!! And it's 15 days old, as of today's date.

Now I'll come to the problems I'm facing:

1. Cloudy white/yellow water.
2. Ammonia measurement 3.0 mg/l (Tetra test NH3/NH4 "Total Ammonia").
3. Foamy water surface (as like a shampoo has been added to it!!!).

I lost 8 fish till today. Last week I made 60% water change and I used anti cloudy water chemical, but after 4 days, the water returned cloudy and more foamy.

Unfortunately, I didn't search for setting up a freshwater aquarium before starting my own (I thought it will be like 1+1=2) and I were unlucky because I didn't know about this amazing forum before all of that major problems I had.

For now, I don't know if my tank is cycled or not, can it be safe for my fish or not, can I get rid of that cloudy and foamy water, can my fish survive into it or NOT ?

Please, I & my fishes are seeking your help and support to give them a better, clear and healthy environment. And I need your guidance how to cycle the water into my take with this amount of fishes to have the bacteria and to be a better place for my fishes. I believe that it's a huge community but I'm waiting your advice.


Finally, I want to apologize to all of you for the long post I wrote "I know that it was boring to most of you".

Appreciate you support in advance.



Respectfully,


SALEH.