New fish owner & need some advice from fish owners!

Hey everyone, I am a new fish owner and had a few questions.
I have heard mixed opinions that you can use a diluted solution of 1:1 white vinegar to clean the fish tanks and decorations. What are everybody's thoughts?
I just purchased 5 Neon Tetras today and am stressing because this is only my second time buying fish. My first round was with 8 or 9 goldfish, and they were all dead in under 48 hours. I was underprepared before and might have gotten more than I needed this time, but I am really not sure.
The water in the tank is at 76 degrees. I had to add some pH decrease to get it down to 7.5. There is no ammonia, nitrites, or nitrates. However, I do not have a way to test the dkH levels. Do I need to get a test strip for Carbonate Hardness? I have already put the Tetras in the tank.
Any thoughts would be great! I have found a lot of contradicting information on the internet and do not know much about setting up an aquarium or having fish.
Thanks!

 

The most important thing in keeping fish is live plants. Plant your tank out to be about 30-50% in plants, then add your fish. In the last Twenty years I have never used any bottled products in my tanks apart from food.

 

Hi Kota
Welcome to fishlore.
Most if not all aquariums have colonies of bacteria living on ( ON) the filter .

To answer your questions.
White vinegar is used to clean an empty or second hand tank that’s all.

You brought fish but the tank has not got established bacteria colonies. You are now doing a fish in cycle.

You must add de chlorinator/ conditioner to all aquarium water.

The GH KH and PH are not a priority . The tank is not cycled that is dangerous for the fish.

The nitrogen cycle is what you need to concentrate on learning about.

Having established healthy fast growing plants would be nice but as you have fish in the tank today you need to change some water today. Change about half the water before you even read up on the nitrogen cycle.
This may help?

Aquarium Nitrogen Cycle Forum

 

Hello, and welcome to the forum. I have a few points that will hopefully help.

• Put all those chemicals except the water conditioner (assuming you're on municipal or other water system that treats with chlorine or chloramine) on the back of a shelf behind other stuff and forget they're there.
• Keep the test strips, and test daily, at least for a week or so. Change at least 25% of your water if the combined ammonia and nitrites reach 0.5 ppm. Between this, and the neon tetras having a much smaller bioload than goldfish, you should have much more success this time.
• You said you're trying to get your pH down to 7.5. What is it at currently?
• You asked about using vinegar to clean. Did you mean for routine cleaning? If yes, don't clean that stuff. The only cleaning I do is to scrape the front glass if/when it needs it for visibility. Beneficial biofilm and bacteria grow on all surfaces in the tank, and it's best to not disturb them more than necessary. Unlike your house, a sparkling clean tank is not a healthy tank.

 

First of, what are those bottles for? All you need is the dechlorinater and it looks like you have 2 different ones. The others are for enriching the fish store. Completely unneccsary and possibly counterproductive to a healthy tank. Please do not follow fish store advice without first checking it out here. They sold you fish and a ton of unneccesary chemicals when you didn't have a cycled tank ready for fish. You now have the more difficult task of keeping your fish safe while your tank cycles. That can take several weeks. There is no ammonia etc because you have just started cycling the tank and the fish waste and respiration (ans excess food) will provide the ammonia for cycling the tank. DO NOT use the ammo lock

You need to test for ammonia daily. Depending on the test results you may need to do daily water changes to keep the ammonia level low enough to protect the fish. Whenever you see the ammonia above .25ppm do a water change to get it back down. When your daily ammonia level starts to decrease (or 3-4 days after ammonia appears) start testing for nitrite. It may remain at zero for a while. Also keep nitrite at or below .25ppm. When nitrites start to decrease you can start testing for nitrates. Keep them below 20ppm with water changes. In time, you will no longer see ammonia and nitrites in your tests. At that point you can assume that your tank is cycled. However, it will be cycled only for the amount of fish you currently have. If you decide to double your fish population overnight, the bacterial filter will not be big enough to handle it, so it is best to add future fish in small amount, incrementally.

So, as Flyfisha said, an aquarium needs to have a colony of certain bacteria to process the waste from plants, and animals which is toxic to fish. That waste can be rotting plants, fish or snail poo, animal respiration...All these things produce ammonia as they are broken down. When we talk about cycling an aquarium we are talking about establishing those bacteria in a large enough quantity to consume the toxic ammonia that the tank is producing. These bacteria consume the ammonia and produce toxic nitrite. A second group of bacteria will consume the nitrite and produce nitrate. The nitrate is removed from the system with water changes. So you can see why putting fish in an uncycled aquarium is bad for them (can cause permanent damage and sometimes death.

These days, many local fish stores (LFS) are telling people that they can put fish in on day-one if they just add "this bottle of beneficial bacteria". There are several brands of bacteria-in-a-bottle. Sometimes they work. Often they do not. As I said, before you take their advice, do yourself a favor and check back here first. And yes, as you noticed, there is a lot of contradictory info out there.

What is the pH of the tank water before you added the pH down? Unless pH up is off the charts, you don't want to mess with it. Also, I noticed a bottle of pH up. You really don't want to go down the road of playing with pH.

 

Hey Kota I have a collection of very similar bottles from my first few months. I suspect many other people do as well? We all want what is best for our fish.

 

Hi Kota, and Welcome to Fishlore!

It's so good to meet people who are new to the hobby!

I would try to call the store back and see if you could return some of those products, especially those that you have not used yet. Maybe you could trade some of the products for an API Freshwater master test kit, which is more accurate than the test strips, and lasts a lot longer. As stated above, keep the dechlor/water conditioner and the test strips, if you are not able to get a master test kit. If you kept your receipt, then maybe you can return the unused products and get some money back.

If you have any other questions, please post them. You have been given some really good advice above. Our members are very knowledgable, and we are here to help!

 

The most important thing in keeping fish is live plants. Plant your tank out to be about 30-50% in plants, then add your fish. In the last Twenty years I have never used any bottled products in my tanks apart from food.

Ok, thank you! I have two Java Ferns in the tank and a couple of fake plants as well. They really seem to be liking to live plants.

Hi Kota, and Welcome to Fishlore!

It's so good to meet people who are new to the hobby!

I would try to call the store back and see if you could return some of those products, especially those that you have not used yet. Maybe you could trade some of the products for an API Freshwater master test kit, which is more accurate than the test strips, and lasts a lot longer. As stated above, keep the dechlor/water conditioner and the test strips, if you are not able to get a master test kit. If you kept your receipt, then maybe you can return the unused products and get some money back.

If you have any other questions, please post them. You have been given some really good advice above. Our members are very knowledgable, and we are here to help!

Ok, thank you so much for the advice! I think I opened a couple of those items, but there are a few things that I haven't opened. I will try and swap out and get the API Freshwater master test kit you suggested! Thanks again!

Hi Kota
Welcome to fishlore.
Most if not all aquariums have colonies of bacteria living on ( ON) the filter .

To answer your questions.
White vinegar is used to clean an empty or second hand tank that’s all.

You brought fish but the tank has not got established bacteria colonies. You are now doing a fish in cycle.

You must add de chlorinator/ conditioner to all aquarium water.

The GH KH and PH are not a priority . The tank is not cycled that is dangerous for the fish.

The nitrogen cycle is what you need to concentrate on learning about.

Having established healthy fast growing plants would be nice but as you have fish in the tank today you need to change some water today. Change about half the water before you even read up on the nitrogen cycle.
This may help?

Aquarium Nitrogen Cycle Forum

So should I add the dechlorinator/conditioner and then swap out half the water? Thank you for your help! I will look up the nitrogen cycle right now

 

I had to add some pH decrease to get it down to 7.5. There is no ammonia, nitrites, or nitrates. However, I do not have a way to test the dkH levels. Do I need to get a test strip for Carbonate Hardness?

NEVER use any parameter (pH, GH, KH) altering chemicals without knowing readings of the others. Especially if it is pH. KH (carbonate hardness or alkalinity), determines the pH. If you have to lower pH for whatever reason you HAVE TO know the KH, otherwise it is extremely easy to kill your stock. Also never mix in chemicals directly in the tank, pretreat the water in a bucket or a vat beore adding it to the tank.
You can test KH with test strips, you can also get drip tests for that.

And goodness gracious! Whoever sold you all these bottles must be a retail genius!
The only ones useful are the tap water conditioner and Aquasafe. Incidently both are the same stuff. Use one of them until it's empty then use the other one instead. Everything else: Toss them or in the far back of the shelf you need none of them.

The test strips are useful though. Keep those.

 

The de chlorinator is added to the bucket of new temperature matched water and it’s ready to go in the fish tank. It takes only two minutes to make tap water safe . We say it’s instant but the manufacturers say wait two minutes.

just for your information.

If filling a tank with a hose you add the conditioner as you turn the hose on. But when filling with a hose you add enough conditioner for the entire volume of the tank.