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Re: what type and how many fish for cycling???
The article mentioned does a pretty good job of explaining what is going on.
Once your tank has cycled, you hopefully will never have to do it again, as you will have established the bacteria you need. If you have a power failure, or your filter breaks and has to be replaced, you may have a mini-cycle if the filter bacteria are damaged during the power outage, or are not transferred from the old filter to the new filter by moving old filter media to the new filter. If you begin feeding too much, or add more fish to the tank, the bacteria will have to multiply to catch up to the new level of wastes in the tank so you get a mini-cycle for a short time.
As for filters, you will keep the same filter for cycling as for normal operation. You will clean it, probably with each water change. That depends on how dirty it is. How you clean it will depend on what sort of filter it is. Most have sponges that you rinse in used tank water and squeeze out, some have cartridges that are replaced. Some of those can be switched for less expensive cartridges loaded with cheap padding. You will also clean the gravel, probably not at each water change.
As for water changes, probably the best way to know is to test the water for nitrates, then change water to get the nitrates to between 20 and 40 ppm. Each tank is different, but if you keep records you will see that maybe on Saturday your tank tested at 50 ppm nitrates, so if you do a 30% water change you will remove 30% of that, leaving 70% or 35 pm behind. Then next Saturday you test again to see how the nitrates rose during the week. Eventually you will figure out exactly how much you need to change out each week, or every 2 weeks, or whatever schedule you are comfortable with. Ideally, get the nitrates down to 10 or 20, then let it rise to maybe 40 (though picky fish keepers try to keep that to 20 max!)
Actually, I haven't seen anyone mention the importance of a Fish Journal for new fish keepers. Very important! Get a notebook and keep records of everything, until you are comfortable that you know what you are doing. This is very important for the difficult time of cycling the tank, for as that chart in the article noted, the ammonia and nitrites spike rapidly and if you are recording and graphing it you will know when to change water to keep the fish comfortable.
In your journal, record when you got new food (so you throw it out after 6 months -- oils go rancid), water temperature, test results, what chemicals you used, if any fish had illnesses or bad behavior. All this is very handy if you find you need to ask for help online, so you can accurately tell the tale.
Originally posted by loopy119";p="
Once your tank has cycled, you hopefully will never have to do it again, as you will have established the bacteria you need. If you have a power failure, or your filter breaks and has to be replaced, you may have a mini-cycle if the filter bacteria are damaged during the power outage, or are not transferred from the old filter to the new filter by moving old filter media to the new filter. If you begin feeding too much, or add more fish to the tank, the bacteria will have to multiply to catch up to the new level of wastes in the tank so you get a mini-cycle for a short time.
As for filters, you will keep the same filter for cycling as for normal operation. You will clean it, probably with each water change. That depends on how dirty it is. How you clean it will depend on what sort of filter it is. Most have sponges that you rinse in used tank water and squeeze out, some have cartridges that are replaced. Some of those can be switched for less expensive cartridges loaded with cheap padding. You will also clean the gravel, probably not at each water change.
As for water changes, probably the best way to know is to test the water for nitrates, then change water to get the nitrates to between 20 and 40 ppm. Each tank is different, but if you keep records you will see that maybe on Saturday your tank tested at 50 ppm nitrates, so if you do a 30% water change you will remove 30% of that, leaving 70% or 35 pm behind. Then next Saturday you test again to see how the nitrates rose during the week. Eventually you will figure out exactly how much you need to change out each week, or every 2 weeks, or whatever schedule you are comfortable with. Ideally, get the nitrates down to 10 or 20, then let it rise to maybe 40 (though picky fish keepers try to keep that to 20 max!)
Actually, I haven't seen anyone mention the importance of a Fish Journal for new fish keepers. Very important! Get a notebook and keep records of everything, until you are comfortable that you know what you are doing. This is very important for the difficult time of cycling the tank, for as that chart in the article noted, the ammonia and nitrites spike rapidly and if you are recording and graphing it you will know when to change water to keep the fish comfortable.
In your journal, record when you got new food (so you throw it out after 6 months -- oils go rancid), water temperature, test results, what chemicals you used, if any fish had illnesses or bad behavior. All this is very handy if you find you need to ask for help online, so you can accurately tell the tale.
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