Ready to start- have timing questions

I have all of my equipment and I'm ready to start filling and planting my tank. At what point will I need to start doing water tests and how often will I need to do them?

The guys at the fish store have assured me that I can cycle my tank with rasboras after two or three days of allowing the tank filter to run (fluval 206) with conditioned water. I know there are people out there who are strongly against this method.

I'm going to be out of town between Wednesday and Saturday or even Sunday of this week, so I'm thinking I should just wait and do the whole thing after I return, but I don't know how soon I'm going to need to start doing water tests or if being away would allow me to keep my hands off of the thing and let it get settled! (I wouldn't add fish until after I returned because at the earliest I wouldn't be able to fill the tank until tonight and that doesn't leave me enough time to let it run before adding fish before I go out of town)

Advice? Any benefit to allowing the filter to run with an empty planted tank for five days? Or should I just wait and get started next week?

 

There is no benifit to running an empty tank, unless you are doing a fishless cycle.

Cycling with fish is difficult. Because ammonia and nitrites are highly toxic to fish even at low levels, you will need to do daily partial water changes with a water conditioner that will detox ammonia and nitrites such as SeaChem's Prime. But Prime only detoxes lowish levels of ammonia/nitrites for 24 hours, so the daily partial water changes (35%-50%) will keep the levels low enough for the Prime to fully detox. Sadly, this can take six weeks or so (that's a lot of water changes).

A better solution for you may be to use Tetra SafeStart. With SafeStart you fill the tank with dechlonated water, wait at least 24 hours then add fish and a Bottle of SafeStart at the same time. Then do nothing other than feed the fish (no adding water, no adding chemicals etc) for the next 14 days. On day 14 test and if all went well you should have a cycled tank.

 

I have to admit that part of my excitement about all of this is getting all scientific and nerdy and testing the water and watching it go through the cycle. Maybe I should really consider a fishless cycle to get the full experience.

So let's say I decide to go fishless. Any benefit to getting the tank filled and planted tonight, going through a couple days of adding food and then having it sit for 4 days?

 

If you go fishless, there is no harm in starting it before you go away. In the worst case scenario all the bacteria will die while you are away, and then you will just restart the process, loosing at most the couple of days that you invested ahead of time. Since you would then be doing it fishless, no fish will be harmed in the process, and the only harm may be to bacteria. However, in the best case scenario the fish food you put in before your trip will cause some beneficial bacteria growth, and all bacteria might not die while you are away, and thus you might start at a better starting point than zero when you return after your trip. With fishless cycle the wonderful thing is that because no fish are in danger, you have more leeway of what to do, and mistakes are not as big of a deal.

I don't know about cycling with fish food, since I did my cycling with pure ammonia and I do not know whether it is the same, but with pure ammonia, I added ammonia at the beginning, and then my readings of ammonia and nitrites did not change for the fist week, and this I could have gone for four days during that time without any harm to fishless cycle. Once the nitrites started to show and ammonia went down, I needed to be more active since the ammonia converting bacteria needed to be fed daily, but until the bacteria were numerous enough to convert the initial dose of ammonia, my presence did not appear to be required. I still did the daily measuring, since I was there, and was impatient.

Be careful trusting what pet store employees tell you. In my experience, while a few of them do know about fish, most seem to extrapolate knowledge of hamsters to fish and thus they will happily sell one hamster wheels for aquariums if one does not carefully double check their claims. Best!

 

As JoannaB mentioned, you could dose with ammonia. That would give you some time before you would need to add more. Or you could add a piece of shrimp to the tank, which will provide a steady stream of ammonia as it decomposes. It is good to put the piece of shrimp in a media bag, so all the decomposed pieces don't get all over the tank.

 

I have some fresh shrimp in the freezer. Would I throw a whole shrimp in or just a piece of one? Can you describe this media bag to me?

 

To be honest, I'm not sure about the size piece required. Hopefully someone who knows will answer. If I remeber correctly, a member named Shawnie origonally brought this subject up. (I think she said a piece about the size of a binky...I guess it's a mommy thing)You could try leaving here a visitor message, I'm sure she would be more that willing to help out.

You can buy media bags at the fish store. They are just mesh bags that are usually used for putting loose carbon in. I think the last time I bought one, it was less than $1 at PetSmart.

 

You could also just put a good, golf ball sized amount of fish food in an unused nylon stocking, drop it in the tank and check readings on your return.
As for planting, etc, Go right ahead and do it, no harm in getting that done right away.

 

So let's say I decide to go fishless. Any benefit to getting the tank filled and planted tonight, going through a couple days of adding food and then having it sit for 4 days?

I'm currently in the middle of a fishless cycle using pure ammonia. I placed substrate(cleaned(ugh!) sand), (fake)plants and rocks in then filled it several days before I started cycling. This gave it some time for the sand to settle and the water to be clear. I'm sure it didn't matter, just figured I'd offer that up since I did it just a few weeks ago.

I'm currently cycling well and I haven't had to change water at all, which makes me a happy guy.

As for testing, I tested water daily, after work, until I started to get nitrite readings. Then stayed daily tests and have recently started getting nitrate readings. Beginning tomorrow, I'll be testing twice daily; morning before work and evening after work. This schedule because I need to log how quickly ammonia/nitrite levels bottom out to zero. If it happens between the morning and the evening, I'm solid.

 

Congrats mawelch74 on your progress! I still remember the cleaning of the sand as absolutely the worst part of aquarium maintenance thus far - ugh indeed! I also recall that the last part of the cycle seemed to take forever especially since I am not a patient person. However, since I am planning to get Cory catfish and I read that they love sand, I am sure that will be worth it. And once the fishless cycle was completed, I was happy and the first fish I got were happy too! All the best!