DartzMan Posted February 15, 2006 Report Share Posted February 15, 2006 Gday guys ..Just done a test on my new tank...been running about 3 weeks now with 8 Dianos..... results are as follows PH 7.4 Nitrite between 0 and .25 Nitrate 20 Ammonia between .25 and .50 I am still reading up on what the levels should be, but your comments would be welcome tank is 110 Litre 3 foot long one Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sharn Posted February 15, 2006 Report Share Posted February 15, 2006 looks like its getting to the middle of a cycle. do daily water changes of around 30% for your danios (bet theyre not too comfortable right now!!), just dont clean gravel, filters etc. you can change the water without worrying about disrupting your cycle as not much of the benefical bacteria is suspended in water. keep testing daily and you should see your ammonia and nitrite drop down to nothing after a few more weeks (approx). your nitrates could be pretty high so do a partial water change before you add your fish Hope this helped Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DartzMan Posted February 15, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 15, 2006 thanks for that mate...noticed a bit of a change in the Danios after the water change...alot more lively and playfull will keep ya posted Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DiverJohn Posted February 15, 2006 Report Share Posted February 15, 2006 GIdday Dartz, Sharn is spot on. The ammonia ia a bit high, so your fish will be getting a bit stressed, so keep up those water changes. You could consider adding some plants too. These may help a little with the nitrate level. But yeah, water changes are the way to go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DartzMan Posted February 16, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 16, 2006 Have got a few plants in there......did the water change as stated yesterday......Added another filter the tank....Can never have to many filters.... Now I have a 2 X Fluval 304 internal, a 1500L external cannister with a Fluidizer filter.....Should help keep the whole thing cleaner... Did a test this evening and noted the following PH 8.1 Ammonia 0-0.25 Nitrate 10 Nitrite 0 PH gone high., think I didnt add water conditioner to tap water....will do another change tonight and add conditioner... Seems Ammonia is dropping and also the Nitrates are down.... Nitrite 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sharn Posted February 16, 2006 Report Share Posted February 16, 2006 holy hell thats alot of filtration!!! thats more than 10X per hour, probably around the 20X per hour!!! what are you going to be keeping in there lol, trout from super fast ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DartzMan Posted February 16, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 16, 2006 hehehehe....Na,. gunna move the Danios to another tank and have an overcrowded African Cichlid tank...... Stick 4 X Electric Yellows and 4 X Blues....with a couple cat fish Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanksman Posted February 16, 2006 Report Share Posted February 16, 2006 Gee thats not crowded for that level of filtration. Its 35 times an hour before media and flow loss - gotta be 25 times an hour plus. Thats serious overkill. You need more tanks for some of that equipment regardless of my opinion on fluvals. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DartzMan Posted February 16, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 16, 2006 not to keen on teh Fluval myself....thats another reason why I got a cannister filter....Decided to leave the fluval in there as It may be doing some use plus, I have a filter ready to go into another tank if neccassery you were saying that the amount of fish I was looking at wasnt over crowded...As I am looking at Aficans, what would you recommend for a tank this size, with the filtration it has? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanksman Posted February 16, 2006 Report Share Posted February 16, 2006 I also believe that you can have too much filtration when setting up the tank. You need to provide enough food (ammonia and then nitrite) for the developing bacteria to build up on. This is easy to do when cycling. If the level of food subsequently drops off once a large amount of bacteria has established accross many filters, once cycling is complete you could end up with a whole lot of dead bacteria and a toxic tank that will need to be cycled again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanksman Posted February 16, 2006 Report Share Posted February 16, 2006 With fish that size and the above filtration I'd say around 15 even 20. The trick will be to get rid of the excess CO2 using an airstone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DartzMan Posted February 16, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 16, 2006 running a couple stones in the tank.... Can you recommend types of AFricans? as I stated before I like the Elect Laps and the Blues....what would you recommend to go with these? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanksman Posted February 16, 2006 Report Share Posted February 16, 2006 There are far more experienced rift lake lovers on this forum. They can answer that for you. You might want to check out these sites tho. http://www.tropheus.info/riftlakes/index.html http://www.malawicichlidhomepage.com/aq ... abido.html http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/man ... ater1.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
suphew Posted February 16, 2006 Report Share Posted February 16, 2006 No you cant have too much filtration, you will only get as much bacteria as there is food for therefore if you have more filters they will just be spread thinner and there are lots of benefits to multiple filters, redundancy, less impact on tank when cleaning a filter, longer between filter cleans, etc. The only problem you could run into would be too much water movement for the type of fish, i.e. Discus don't enjoy too much current. Cichlids are fine with heaps of current. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanksman Posted February 17, 2006 Report Share Posted February 17, 2006 Discus don't enjoy too much current. Cichlids are fine with heaps of current. Rubbish. Discus are cichlids! Some cichlids are OK with high water movement some are not. DO some research. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
suphew Posted February 17, 2006 Report Share Posted February 17, 2006 Rubbish. Discus are cichlids! Some cichlids are OK with high water movement some are not. DO some research This is the beginners area, and I didn't want to confuse things, as far as most beginners are concerned discus are discus and cichlids malawi's, africans etc, because of talking to a beginner I was using generalizations. Rubbishing my whole statement because of insignicant details is stupid and confusing for new fish keepers. Finally your completely incorrect statments regards too much filtration, providing enough food for extra bacteria, and dead bacteria making the tank toxic, show you have a complete lack of understanding of the cycle process. I suggest you do some research yourself. And dartzman, you can ignore the posting about excess CO2 and using an airstone, it is complete rubbish, I have no idea where all this excess CO2 is suppost to come from, fish panting from having to swim hard against all the excessive flow I guess. Even if it was there the water movement from your filters would be plently to drive it out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanksman Posted February 17, 2006 Report Share Posted February 17, 2006 And dartzman, you can ignore the posting about excess CO2 and using an airstone, it is complete rubbish, I have no idea where all this excess CO2 is suppost to come from, fish panting from having to swim hard against all the excessive flow I guess. Even if it was there the water movement from your filters would be plently to drive it out. Excessive CO2 build up will occur if your aquarium is overstocked regardless of what our esteemed colleague thinks on the issue. It is important to eliminate excess CO2 in an African tank because if not then there is a danger that your Ph level will drop especially if there is not enough buffering in the water. Wether your filtration will help remove it from the water depends on how it is setup and whether the water surface is being sufficiently agitated. You will never have more food available to your denitrifying Bacteria than during the cycling process. If too large a Bacterial colony builds up during this process it is only natural that alot of it will die off due to starvation once cycling is complete. I would recommend you culture one filter in that tank and add the others when you are happy the tank has cycled. Better still get another tank and use some of that good gear in it. Just because this is the beginners area doesn't mean we should confuse the issue by calling discus discus and cichlids cichlids. That sounds like something out of the beehive. Maybe its a wellingtonian thing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
suphew Posted February 17, 2006 Report Share Posted February 17, 2006 Why would you suggest that dartzman overstocks his tank? African (Rift lake) Cichlid's require hard water, acheived using crushed shell or Dolomit for substrate or in the filter. This will increase the KH and in turn buffer the PH. If you allow the hardness to drop so far that PH buffering became a problem and the small amount of CO2 from the fish started to cause the PH to drop you would have bigger problems to worry about. Buffering using Cichlid salt's is often also required. The end of the cycle process is not like flicking a switch, unless something bad happens like the heater gets stuck on, bacteria don't just suddenly all die and pollute the tank. As the food supply starts to lessen, the bacteria that are dieing off provide food to remaining bacteria. This happens anyway in any setup with any filtration, and can be seen by the ammonia, then nitrite, then nitrate, spikes. i.e. once the ammonia spike has passed all the 'extra' bacteria that were processing the excess ammonia start moving down to the correct ballanced level. Point taken regards Discus/cichlids, in future I will spell it out for you (as I have done above), however it was just an example picked at random to make a point, and I did think it was pretty clear what 'Cichlids' were being discussed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanksman Posted February 17, 2006 Report Share Posted February 17, 2006 Overstocking in an African tank is commonly used to minimise aggression as usually no fish can establish a territory and breeding is almost out of the question. With a tank filtration of 20 plus times per hour turnover this is definitely an option - it depends on what Dartzman wants to acheive - a pair or harem of spawning africans or an eye pleasing display of lots of coulourful fish. The end of the cycle process is not like flicking a switch..., As the food supply starts to lessen, the bacteria that are dieing off provide food to remaining bacteria. This happens anyway in any setup with any filtration. Do you have a reference for that assertion? I'm not saying I know for sure however I have never heard of that level of filtration being used in the cycling process before - usually 7 times an hour is not acheived. My understanding of the reproductive behaviour of bacteria is along the lines of... Bacteria live strange lives. In optimal conditions they can reach maturity in 20 minutes, they can then reproduce and one becomes two. twenty minutes later two becomes four. In another twenty minutes they become eight. After the first hour there are 8. After two hours there are 64. If the first bacterium fell into a perfect soup at the stroke of midnight there would be 2 097 152 of them by the time you woke up at 7.00 am. By the time you had morning coffee or recess at 10.40 am there would be 4.4 billion. So with that growth each stage of cycling would be complete very suddenly. I don't disagree that under normal conditions (water filtration turnover 3 -7 times an hour) a natural level of bacteria easily increases in number or decreases without problem. I'm raising a point for discussion of whether you can have too much filter media at certain times in your setup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DartzMan Posted February 17, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 17, 2006 In regards to "The set up" of my tank.... Breeding of fish is not my priority however I would always welcome any of the fish I have breed, I am mainly after a lot of variations of colour in the tank..I have set my sites at about 4 Electric Yellows 4 X Blues, 4 X orange fish and a couple cleaners What blue and Orange fish , I am unsure of...(your welcome to suggest, would like a fish that grows to about 4-5")..I did see a brilliant blood red Cichlid on the net and would love to get some of those too but I am unsure if they are available in OZ they are Aulonocara chipoke red Below is a list of what fish I am looking at 4 Electric Yellow 4 Electric Blue 4 Peacock 4 X Aulonocara chipoke red Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caryl Posted February 17, 2006 Report Share Posted February 17, 2006 Overstocking Africans to stop aggression is common and works well. My Malawi tank does not seem to suffer from excess CO2 (but how do I tell?) and doesn't have airstones. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caper Posted February 18, 2006 Report Share Posted February 18, 2006 PH gone high., think I didnt add water conditioner to tap water I didn't think water conditioner had any bearing on the pH level, does it? I thought the main purpose of conditioner was to remove cholorine & chloramine? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pegasus Posted February 18, 2006 Report Share Posted February 18, 2006 I thought the main purpose of conditioner was to remove cholorine & chloramine? The "main" purpose of such products is to remove a little bit more money from the pockets of the mis-informed hobbyist Bill. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caper Posted February 18, 2006 Report Share Posted February 18, 2006 :lol: :lol: But you do have to remove them though, I know that you can just let water sit and the chlorine...ah...goes :roll: I was told because our water supply had chloramine (gee, terrible spelling!!!) that I had to add the remover to get rid of it. Is this not true about chloramine? Although, hmmm....I should call our water department to see if it does have it in it since it was the lady at the pet store that told me it did :roll: :roll: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caryl Posted February 19, 2006 Report Share Posted February 19, 2006 Chlorine will dissipate if the water is left to sit a day or 2. It will dissipate faster if you aerate the water. We do not have chloramines in our water in NZ so it is not an issue with us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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