New Tank

[aquabee]

Lookin good! Ariel looks very content. Did your daughter pick her out for the tank??

[eklikewhoa]

ehh... I thinks you bought the wrong plant from petco... the white striped one isn't aquatic, it's terrestrial and will eventually die in your tank.

[Chris.d514]

Indeed.

[Chris.d514]

ehh... I thinks you bought the wrong plant from petco... the white striped one isn't aquatic, it's terrestrial and will eventually die in your tank.

I'll let it go as long as it can and replace when it dies or when I get more for cheap.

[Chris.d514]

So I leave the light on at night and off during the day in my daughters tank. I just went to look in on it and the only snail I can see is the assassin who buries itself when the light is on at night.

[Chris.d514]

With the 3.5 dead I took the LED out of the hood and drilled a hole for it in the 10 gallon so I'm not blasting close to sunlight in my daughters room all night. It makes her glofish really stand out since we leave it on the blue/black light setting.

[digitallinh]

What's with all the snail hate here.... I say Leave the snails alone!

[mnemenoi]

They do seem to get a bad reputation.

[LooksLater]

What's with all the snail hate here.... I say Leave the snails alone!

[Chris.d514]

What's with all the snail hate here.... I say Leave the snails alone!

Snails are pretty boring and a four year old girl does not want 500000 snails in her tank.

[LooksLater]

Snails are pretty boring and a four year old girl does not want 500000 snails in her tank.

I can understand that- 5,000 MTS will be sucking on Ariel's face and she will be like, "NnooooOooO!!"

But if they are tylo's, that's good. They are slower in breeding and very pretty, she may like them.

[Chris.d514]

I haven't seen any since I pulled those 2 out and put the assassin in.

[Chris.d514]

So the fish in my daughters tank were staying near the bottom but they are all top swimmers so we decided to test the water and our ph was 7.8, ammonia was .5, nitrites 5, and nitrates 80ish. I changed 1.5 gallons as the nitrites and nitrates seemed way too high. Should I change more?

[digitallinh]

If you replace 7 gallons in a 14 gallon tank (roughly) you effectively remove 50% of the ammonia, nitrites and nitrates.

Do you care about the fish? Ammonia and nitrites should be zero. Nitrates as I have stated are an indicator of your water quality, and this should also be near zero, though 20-40 is probably acceptable for most fish.

If you do not care about the fish, I would probably chalk this entire thing up as a fish-in cycle experience and leave them in there to rot away and die, changing water once a week, but the end result would be that your tank is cycled.

If you do care about the fish, I would change out 50% of the water every single day until your ammonia and nitrites tests zero, which I would test every 3-4 days, and this entire process could last 2 weeks to a month.

[LooksLater]

Hey Chris- don't get disheartened, we know you're trying! You bought a test kit and are trying to figure it out, which is more than some new to the hobby do.

The tank is new and the mulm we gave you will help, but yes- water change, water change, water change. And definitely no more fish in the tank until your numbers are 0-0->20. If the ammonia and nitrite numbers are higher than 0, it's still cycling. You'll get there!