Thanks very much for the warm welcome! I’m just glad communities like this exist on the Internet where hobbyists can talk so freely and passionately about their interests, without even leaving the comfort of their homes! =D Viva la intertubes!
To continue, I set up the tank on Thursday night (Oct 16), and let it run till Sunday morning. During that time, looking at an empty aquarium just made me feel… well lonely! Could I stand 3 weeks to a month of nothing but empty aquarium while waiting for it to cycle with a piece of decaying fish/shrimp? I could not! So I gave in to temptation and purchased 2 young fantail
goldfish and 3 kinds of plants. Don’t worry, I know what I am getting into and further along this post I’ll explain the steps I’m taking to make sure that my babies are as comfortable as possible during the cycling.
The Choice of Fish:
I picked fantail goldfish mainly because I really loved their double curtain tails and reddish-gold color. They look like dancing jewels in the aquarium! The other varieties of goldfish didn’t really appeal to me, and some quite honestly freaked me out--how could bulging foreheads, missing dorsal fins, or puffy eyeballs be considered attractive? I do not mean to offend any owners of these fish, let’s just say I don’t get it and leave it at that.
Goldfish are also the most ‘domesticated’ fish specie, which to my mind would make them more used to life indoors. I also like the idea of them having long lives—20 to even 40 years!—a true aquatic life companion. Stories of goldfish as having distinct personalities have also made me curious, I can’t wait to observe what kind of characters my fish have.
By the way I named the bigger one Yu and the smaller one Mi. ;-) When they both measure 3 inches long I’m planning to get them a bigger tank. My office mate says he has a spare 30gal, hope it will fit in the shelf!
The Plants
I got a grass type, a fern type, and a leafy type. I didn’t bother to ask the attendant what they were called; he didn’t even know what I was talking about when I asked him about the substrates they would need. Maybe someone can help identify them for me? =)
See the pic of the new purchases safely home in their baggies (00).
Acclimation and planting
I had some plastic tubes and a flow regulator thing (?), so I decided to use the Drip method. I adjusted the flow for 1 drop of water a second, and put the bag in a black dipper beside the shelf. I think the dark color of the dipper helped calm down the fish. (Pics 01 and 02)
While waiting for the fish to
acclimate, I brought out the plants and removed them from their root pouches. Then I put them in a bin with conditioned water from the tank and added a dose of Methylene blue. I didn’t use a bleach dip because I didn’t have any that weren’t scented, and was afraid to overdose and kill the plants. I thought that since methylene was supposed to kill parasites anyway that it would be somewhat effective? What say you?
While waiting for the plants to soak, I thought about how to anchor their roots to the gravel. Then I remembered how they came in little pouches, and thought I could do the same thing with the gausey material that used to keep the ceramic rings! So I cut the gause up to three parts and used a sewing kit to make three pouches (Pic 03). This took the better part of 45 minutes. After checking on the fish and draining half the water from the bag and resuming the Drip acclimation, I proceeded to stuff each plant’s roots to a bag with gravel and tie them gently off with plastic string (Pic 04).
I put the finished plants in the pail of fresh conditioned water to transport them out the bathroom to the tank, and then planted them in a row at the right side of the tank. Then I topped up the tank water and removed the drip tube, and with extreme care transferred each goldfish from the bag into the tank with a net. Turned on the filter and lights, and voila! Finished aquarium! I admit that the plant arrangement isnt exactly inspired, maybe I can rearrange it after getting a ceramic pot or something as a centerpiece. (Pic 05)
Yu was the more adventurous one, with Mi keeping close to Yu as they swam around the tank. It was cute how they would sometimes split up, explore, then get together again. I also noticed that they liked hanging around the plants.
After admiring my handywork and making baby noises at the goldfish (lol) I turned off the light and let them get used to the new accomodations overnight. Early the next morning I gave them their first feeding, and got a really good look at them. This was when, to my horror, I discovered that Yu has
ICH on his lower right tial fin! (Pic 06)
OH NOES! :-O
I wasn’t exactly surprised, knowing that most shops have overcrowded tanks and centralized filtering systems (one could say I SAVED these fish from the shop), but treating the fish and the tank for the ich would set me back on the nitrogen cycling. Oh well, if that’s how it is, that’s how it is!
Medication and Cycling
Here was the thing: I wouldn’t be able to make daily WCs (water changes) due to my work and social schedule, so this is what I did: I applied the methylene blue dosage and waited for two days. Then I tested for
ammonia (by the way, I found a shop with testing kits for NH3, NO2 and NO3, they were so expensive! $32 total!) and it was yellow (none or too little to measure). But I still changed 25% of the water and reapplied the medicine for the amount of water replaced.
Then after three days, I checked for ammonia again—still no reading. Thankfully, Yu’s ich already cleared up by this time. There was one or two days where a few dots of white appeared on other parts of Yu’s body, but they never lasted more than a day, and didn’t look as ‘angry’ as the original infection. (Pic 07) To be certain, I still applied a dose of methylene after doing another WC.
After four days (which was last night as of this writing) I checked for ammonia again, and there was a slight greenish tinge to the test water, not as green as the next level which meant an ammonia amount of .25mg/L, but still a noticable change. So that decided it: 25% WCs every 4 days.
This time I no longer added medication to the water, and put the activated carbon in the filter canister to clean out any residual medication. However when I looked at the ceramic rings, they were tainted blue! Does this mean they will never hold bacteria until the color vanishes? Should I buy new ceramic media? D-:
I plan to test for nitrites (2nd stage) on the next scheduled WC, and do so daily until a detectable amount is present. I will adjust the WCs if the result is shorter than the 4 day schedule. Then only after a couple of sets of WCs will I start testing for nitrates. I’m using my PDA excel sheet to monitor these developments, so it shouldn’t be too hard!
That’s it for now! Wish me luck!
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Nice little tank you have there. Glad you decided to join the forum with all of us.
