Newbie with questions in need of advice

[Aster]

First of hello to everyone here , and now to my issues . As many i must imagine first time aquarium owners i stupidly bought tanks filled them used an additive and went out the next day and got fish . Now after doing my research i feel terrible that im forcing my poor fish to deal with cycling the tanks but at this point not much i can do .

Currently i have a 55 Gallon tank it has in it ( some have died =( we did not replace them we just were given credit at the LFS i dont want to bring anyone else home to suffer =( )
2 Anglefish
1 Rainbow Gourami
2 Kissing gourami
1 tiger barb
2 dalmation mollies
2 orange stripe tetras
1 black stripe tetras
4 orange and black platties ( sorry forgot exatly what kind there same size as my mollies)
1 small albino pleco
1 medium black pleco
1 Crown tail beta
1 yellow snail
1 black snail
7 danyos
1 African dwarf frog
6 ghost shrimp
15 assorted small live plants mostly grasses and ferns
i realize now some of this fish are schooling fish like the tetras and once this tank is cycled i will add them some buddies but i cant bring myself to buy more fish atm till i get this thing fixed .
i am using 2 filters on this tank now the one that came with it was to small rated only to 40 gallons and another that is rated for 30 to 60 gallons that i added about a week ago. We also have 2 blubbers going i believe they are 18 inch each ( the largest ones the lfs sells )

Now for the numbers my levels currently are
AM 0.4 ppm
nitrite 3.0 ppm
nitrate 20 ppm
i have very hard water (well)
my Alkalinity is 300 ppm
my tank PH is 8.4 or very high alkalinity ( this is the way my well water tests with nothing in it also )
i have 0 chlorine in my water ( again its well water )

these have been the levels consistently for 3 days now what i am doing is a 15 gallon water change in the 55 gal tank every day ( 3 5 gallon buckets full of water drained daily like clockwork for a week now )

Now i also have a 2nd tank it is also not cycled as i had to separate some fish and wen t out and bought it about 4 days after i set up the 55 gal .
It is a 10 gal tank its inhabitants are
2 Dwarf puffers ( yay puffers)
and 1 medium black pleco
5 Small plants again ferns and grasses
Again id already purchased these fish before i did my research =( the puffers killed the neon tetras i originally had in the 55 gal with the other fish ( a school of 10 though likely the uncycled tank killed some though i did visually see puffers kill some tetras )

for 4 days the readings have been the same on this tank they are as follows
Am 1.0 ppm
nitrite 0
nitrate 0
Same alkalinity and hard water as above these readings are exactly the same in all 3 tanks i have setup atm

For these guys i have been changing 50 % of there water every day for the last week since i learned of my egregious error in not precycling the tanks . i had also been feeding them brine shrimp that i thawed in a little cup of room temp water but i read on here ( i trolled for about a week before i joined ) that they do not have very good nutrition sadly there were recommended over the bloodworm's by the guy at the LFS today i bought them some blood worms though and will start feeding them tomorrow ( i have also feed them 4 times with earthworms 1 each that i normally use for feeding my baby box turtle hatchling they are safe organically grown with no pesticides however . And 1 time we feed them a handful of pond snails from the lfs that were in the plants tank they gave us maybe 3 or so per puffer ( though the dominate one probably ate most of them ).

I also have another 55 gallon tank we just setup it currently has nothing in it as im trying to do a fishless cycle in it

Well i said nothing i mean 5 Small fern plants

Ok now to my real problem ( bet ya thought we were already there) on July 11th we are leaving town for 8 days to go on vacation we will have a girl staying in our hose to watch our dogs and feed my 2 baby turtles ( box 3 toed and snapper both about the size of a half dollar ). Problem is feeding a turtle a few worms and soaking it in water for 15 mins a day to hydrate it and letting a couple dogs go out in a fenced yard is a bit different then having someone that dosent know anything about tanks come and drain and test water ( i spend about 3 hours a day working on the tanks and feeding the turtles changing water testing ext ) . Im very afraid that i will not be able to get these tanks cycled in time for us to leave and that 8 days with no water changes may very well kill all my fish .

We picked up a 20 gal tank and setup at a thrift store today and i am moving the puffers to it tomorrow ( i figure a bigger uncycled tank is better then a smaller uncycled tank ) and am going to drain clean and re setup the 10 gal as a quarantine tank ( i had to deal with ick probably due to the terrible condition i put my poor fish in a few days ago ) as i do not want to have to medicate in my main tanks again before we go on vacation given the fragility of the cycle process .

So there it is i know its long i tried to keep it short though and only give the info most needed very sorry that it is a bit long but i really wanted to get ll the information i could think of in this post so that you peeps here could possibly help me and an answer is onyl as good as the information its based on .

One last thing tonight i added 60 Ml of Micro-Lift Special blend ecosystem in a bottle ( supposed to help kick start the cycle )to the 55 gallon . This weekend if there is something that i can see a large consensus on i will purchase any cycling additive the majority of you think i should . This stuff i used looked pretty good though thick and brown i refrigerated it after opening though it says its good for a year .

Thank you in advance for all constructive help . and i know im very new and in no position to ask for anything from you but please do not berate me i realize i made mistakes im here trying to fix them though and i will gladly do / listen to any and all constructive criticism but i already realized i should have first cycled ext ext i cant go back and do that now but i dont want my fish to suffer any longer then they have to to get these tanks into a happy place for them .

again thank you in advance for the help
Thad

[trekenk]

Hello and welcome to The Puffer Forum you have come to the right place for some great advice. Here is a link to start with.

library/water-filtration/emergencycycle/

[Aster]

ok i read that link . i forgot to mention it but i did get piece of the filter stuff they use at my local petco it was fairly large but looked like it might have been relatively new wasn't very discolored except in the very middle none the less i cut it into several pieces ( trying to keep a piece of the middle on each slice and put them into each of my filters 3 in the 55 gal community 1 in the puffer tank and 2 in the 55 gal im trying to fish less cycle .

After writing this i got to thinking and if i can get the fishless tank to cycle in 3 weeks then i should be good to go for my vacation i could even do like a 100 % water change on the other 55 and move the puffers to it from the 20 gal for that week . Or is that a bad idea since the loss of fish will = less ammonia = death of the bacteria and then back to square one on that tank .

[pufferpuggirl]

I would think your best bet would be to try and get more mature filter media into your tanks, if you can do that, then you're more than halfway there and the bacteria in the mature media should be able to handle your fish (as long as it's come from a tank with a similar stocking level). If I were going on vacation, and I was in your shoes, that's what I would be trying to do. See if you can't find someone willing to give you some used filter media, or see if you can buy some from an LFS.
I think that's the easiest way to deal with this situation that you're in. But that's just my opinion.

[Aster]

ya pufferpuggirl like i said i tried to get some from the lfs (petco) and they gave me some but it wasn't very dirty and more Grey then brown (does that matter ) . Tonight i will post on CL and see if anyone locally wouldn't mind to give me some filter juice or an old sponge ext . Should i be worried about disease though ?

Today my readings in my 55 gal community tank have gotten mildly better
Am 0.3 ppm
Nitrite 2.0 ppm
Nitrate still around 20 ppm
All other readings are exactly as they always are same as in OP .

That means my am is down another .01 and my nitrite is down 1 . Could that just be a fluke though ? exact same readings for 3 days before this though . Also i do my testing and water change at the exact same time daily and all my tests are done before i change water .

I Just got done setting up the 20 gal for the puffers and am waiting for it to come up to temp its at 72 % F atm and there current tank is at 78 .

I was also wondering about that i see a lot of people say they fill there tanks direct from the tap do you use luke warm water or just cold im on a well and i think my cold water out of the tap is about 55 degrees what we do is fill a 5 gal bucket with a mix of hot and cold water and then test the temp with a thermometer and try to get within a few degrees of the tank . Have i been wasting my time could i just be runing a hose into the filter ?

Again thanks any and all forthcoming info .

Oh if anyone can answer this for me please as nobody locally can tell me anything . My water is very hard , and my water is also very alkaline 8.4 ph on the strip but maybe higher ( that's as far as it goes ) ? and the alkalinity measures 300 ppm . Its exactly the same in all my tanks and straight out of the tap .

[pufferpuggirl]

To be honest, I'm not sure the colour of the sponge means anything, just a darker colour means more debris in the sponge, not necessarily more bacteria. Disease is a possibility from another tank, but hopefully not probable. Isn't there another LFS that you can go to?
Personally, until you get those tanks stable, I would be worried about the inhabitants not doing very well, especially the tank with puffers. Some other tropical fish can withstand a cycle without any problems, but puffers aren't like other fish, they don't have scales or gill covers which makes them very sensitive.

As to filling your tank -- I never put water right from the tap into my tanks, for 2 reasons. First, I like to know the temperature I'm putting in, as I try to get it as close to what it already is in the tank. Secondly, I like to fill the water into containers so I can add Prime (or whatever water conditioner you choose to use) before it goes into the tank.
I do believe there's people on this forum that fill directly from the tap, so they may have a different view to give you.

[xrayjeeper83]

puff what do you keep your water in? and what do you do to get it in the tank.

I put straight from tap to tank due to my syphone connect to the tap to help drain

[Aster]

Ya hopefully there isnt any sickness in the stuff i got from them . and as for other LFS in my area only a wal mart and there are always dead fish in there tanks they had 15 puffers in a 10 gallon when we got our 2 . and several dead in the tank =( .

One of my puffers is doing very good he eats daily and is very active . The other one i just noticed when i moved to the 20 gallon has a little white cyst on his eye =( also he has a little bit of white gunk on the top of his far back tail . I raised the temp and salted the tank per the instructions for ick ich that i read here . Also i just got done scrubbing out the old 10 gal i had them in and cleaned it all out and reset it up as a quarantine tank so as of tomorrow i will be moving any sick looking fish to this tank . I also setup the filter from the 10 gal on the 20 gal ( also the new filter for the 20 gal ) so that any bacteria that might have already been forming in it could hopefully help to cycle this 20 faster .

i also in my community tank have 1 Mollie i am worried about ( nobody has died in 4 days X fingers for me please ) he has what appears to m,y novice eyes to be labored breathing at the top of the tank , this is a sign of ick is it not also he is a silver sailfin mollie and was all silver when i brought him home but he has developed little black spots all down his sides on both sides of him in rows they look natural but i dont know if anyone has any ideas on that .

i tried to take pictures but the pathetic digital camera we have wasn't up to the task of getting good detail on small fish .

Thanks again ppg for responding =) .

[LilGreenPuffer]

With fish-in cycling (NOT AN OPTION for the puffer tank, this refers to the non-puffer tank), you need to do enough water changes to keep both ammonia and nitrite below .25ppm.

I'd suggest returning a lot or all of those fish and starting over.

Are you sure that the DP has ich?

Check out this site:
http://www.aqadvisor.com/

[pufferpuggirl]

In answer to your question xrayjeeper -- I put water into plastic tubs, then I put it back into the tank with a measuring cup -- probably easier ways of doing it but it works for me, so it's just a habit now.

Aster -- in regards to the Mollie that you're worried about. In my opinion, I wouldn't say that a fish with laboured breathing at the top of the tank is a sign of ich (or what we call "whitespot"), but can sometimes mean high nitrites and can be dangerous to the fish. That's usually a sign to do a water change.
Pardon me if you've already answered this question, but how are you testing your water? With what type of test? Hopefully you're not using those test strips.

[Aster]

To the other poster return is not an option at this point , also most of these fish including the puffers ive had for 3 plus weeks now . Nobody has died in several days and i am changing the water very often(50 to 75 % depending on which tank daily ) as its very easy for me to do being on a well with no base contaminants in my water its water in water out with ease . Also if you saw the tank of puffers at wal mart or petco here were i live i doubt you would be so fast to tell me to take them back , imo they will just get sold to someone else with equally dismal understanding of there needs to start and no guarantee they will do as ive done and at least try to research and fix the problem . There are literally 15 plus of these little guys in the tank at wal mart all the time and always at least one dead one in the bottom . And the few at petco are housed with cyclids and most have lare parts of there rear fins missing being already semi stressed i dont think my little guys would make it there .

Also i am changing the water for the puffs daily around 75 % and as of 3 hours ago they are now in a 20 gal tank instead of a 10 im running 2 filters on it both with what i hope is good seeded filter media from my local petco . also i have pretty heavily planted the tank .

Ppg i was originally using those test strips but 2 days ago we bought a liguid test kit the kind with bottles and vials to test for all the stuff ive been testing for except water hardness and cholrine ( i know my water is very very hard and i have 0 cholrine well water also have tested both those for 3 weeks now both from the tap and in tanks and its the same regardless so seems very stable )

Appreciate both remarks but as i stated above i don't see return as an option i just cant believe that the kid at wal mart making minimum wage is going to take better care of these puffers then i am , and the puffers at petco look terribly sad always dark black and sitting on the bottom hiding also the large parts of missing fins .

[LilGreenPuffer]

Wal-Mart flushes all returns live, so never mind that, but Petco might very well sell the fish to great homes, and you never know when the employees are actually devoted hobbyists who try to improve the system. At least their water is cleaner. I understand that returning is no longer an option due to time, but I just wanted to point out that even though I know just what Wal-Mart and Petco fish departments are like, I also know that someone with a better situation than you might buy them. I would still be just as fast!

That molly sounds like it might be a dalmation. Are you interested at all in a brackish setup?

[Aster]

he shouldn't be a a dalmatian but we do have 2 dalmatians with them when we bought them they were all totally silver and were housed by themselves same with the dalmatian mollies . but now after we have had them together the silver ones have all started to get various different types of black spots on them ( doesn't look like infection just looks like there scales grew in black in those places ). Is it possible for genetic traits like color to suddenly change given different water condition food ext ?

Also i noticed that both varieties of mollies have same scientific name so i assume that means they are just like dog breeds someone isolated a certain gene type ( color fin size ext ) that they wanted then breed for that and maybe there color just hadnt started to come out yet when they were sold to me as Silver fantails ? they are all about an inch and a half long id say maybe a little less then that and im pretty sure i have 1 male 2 females of the silver fins and 2 female of the dalmatians .

i really wish i could get a picture with decent clarity in it any tricks to taking pictures of little fish with basic cameras or is that just a pipe dream lol .

Also i still have to disagree on taking the puffers back course im not a big optimist more of a worse case scenario kinda guy myself and all i know is i will for sure do what i have to to give these puffers the best chance of survival i cant be sure someone else will do the same . Do you think i should start doing 2 massive 75 % water changes a day instead of the one im currently doing for the puffs ? I am not opposed to doing more work on my end i feel its my responsibility to these adorable little guys to do whatever i can to make this right .

As always thanks info

[J-P]

After 3 weeks should be almost cycled by now. One trick you may want to try is purchase a media sock, stuff it with sponge and pumice stone and have it sit in the tank at the LFS for a few days, then transfer that wet sock to you tank to kick start it.

Other stuff: A tiny amount of septic tank bacteria (available at the hardware store) may also work. That is controversial and I nether endorse it nor condemn it. viewtopic.php?f=2&t=21497&hilit=+septo#p228044

I understand Dr. Tim's is under a different company but you can look for it.

[LilGreenPuffer]

Is it possible for genetic traits like color to suddenly change given different water condition food ext ?

Do you think i should start doing 2 massive 75 % water changes a day instead of the one im currently doing for the puffs ? I am not opposed to doing more work on my end i feel its my responsibility to these adorable little guys to do whatever i can to make this right .

Different water conditions and care absolutely can change a fish's appearance.

Here's my current foster fish, a female betta. The first picture is from the day I brought her home. She's almost see-through and gray. In the second one, she's developed green/blue metallic fins and a pink body with red speckles on her head.


See how the time she spent with me has changed her appearance? She's obviously plumper, but her color is pretty different too. A stable warm temperature, clean water, aquarium salt, and good rich food healed the ammonia burns, and the deworming probably helped too. The calmer and more spacious living space relieved a lot of stress and helped her healing and overall health. (Please excuse the stress bars. She wasn't too happy about having to hang out in a plastic bin while I pointed the camera at her. But that's another example of how dramatically color can change based on how a fish is feeling. When she's in a better mood, she's much brighter-colored and doesn't have stripes.) (Oh, and by the way, this little girlie is going to her new home on Monday! Woohoo!)

And, yes, you have to keep the ammonia and nitrite at 0ppm 24/7 for your puffers, so do as many water changes as it takes for that to happen.