Fish aquiraum help please?

Question

yesterday i was about to buy a fish until the petsmart clerk told me i had to keep the water in my tank running blah blah..so my question is yesterday i was all good clear then when i woke up dis morning its a little bit cloudy?

Answer 1

The reason for the petsmart guy to keep the water in your tank running with the filter is because, it's very important to cycle the tank. Most mistakes are caused by people refusing to listen about cycling the tank and when this happens, casualties occurs more often than not. It doesn't matter how good of a filtration that you have, as long as you have no necessary bacteria in your tank, you can lose your fishes.

Fishes in the pet shops are already in an established environment, if you put them in an environment that is not established, the fishes are more susceptible to getting sick and possibly dying. Just like us Humans, we need bacteria to survive, if we have no bacteria, when we get bacteria when our bodies are not immune to it, you will get sick and possibly die. Same goes for fishes.

It is very important to cycle the tank for 2-4 weeks, possibly longer. If you go against everybodies advice, you'll have to do a lot of work to keep your fishes healthy. You will need to control the ammonia levels, nitrite and nitrates also the PH balance is important too.

The cloudiness is caused by bacterial bloom or because your tank is in the process of the cycling period. This is very important for you to understand the reasons why people give you this advice.

Yes, you can cycle the tank with fish inside, however, I recommend not doing so. The reason for this being, if you do cycle your tank with fishes inside, you'll have to do that much more work, plus, you may suffer casualties as well, so that is why it is very important to cycle the tank fishless, so that way you don't have to worry about your new additions dying one or two days later.

You should also conduct water changes on a weekly basis of 10-15% and 25% once a month. If your water clarity is really bad, you should do a water change of 10-15% every 3 days and you should be using water conditioners. I like using Aquasafe made by tetra.

You should never clean your filter and change water at the same time. The purpose of the filter also houses the necessary bacteria inside, the necessary bacteria reduces the amount of ammonia and nitrates to keep the water at a steady balance. By adding fish before cycling finishes, the balance of the water will tend to fluctuate a lot more, meaning more water changes and more work.

Anyways, I just thought that I drop some information for you to know and the reasons for the cycling of your tank. If you want to speed up the process of cycling, there is products out there with nitrifying bacteria that can help speed the process, more often than not, a lot of people refuses to use these products because it can also be costly as well. Stress zyme is one of the products.

I don't recommend speeding up the process, but if you want to try and speed it up, you are more than welcomed to, many people had wonderful experiences, but there are others that has had bad experiences with speeding the process of cycling.

Anyways, I hope this helps, thanks for asking.....................

Answer 2

new tanks have to go thru the cycle process you can cycle a tank with fish but if you have never done it it can be hard on the fish and kill them

the cycle process is the tank building up good bacteria to convert excess food and fish waste into nitrate

as the waste builds up in a new tank it turns into ammonia the number 1 fish killer in new tanks the ammonia is converted into nitrite also a fish killer and then nitrates which is fairly harmless to fish

the cloudiness is the cycle process starting it takes about 30 days to complete if you cycle the tank with out fish you will need to add a source of ammonia like fish food some people use pure ammonia

if you do it with fish you will need to test your ammonia level daily sometimes twice a day if the ammonia level gets over 1.0 do partial water chances with out touching the gravel to drop the level if the level gets to high it will kill fish .

I have seen lots of questions today that refer to cycling tanks or tanks that need cycled and the people giving anwsers are totly off the mark they don't even cover cycling the tank so be very care full with the advise you get if it doesn't mention cycling the tank and the need for the process stay clear of it

feel free to contact me

Answer 3

You may need to add an air pump and adjust the filter so that it is able to be heard when the water flows back into the aquarium.  I never listen to the people at Petsmart, every fish I buy there dies within two days, but fish that I buy at other places live for years on end.

Answer 4

you might have to many fish in there... or you need a filter that is on all day. thatswhat i hade to do for my fish and turtle