The Puffer Forum

Hello everyone. I haven't owned fish in about 15 years but every time I walk through a pet store I look at fish. Well finally last week enough was enough. I walked into Petsmart to get some treats for my dog and low and behold there was the $1/gallon sale. I restrained myself as best I could and grabbed a 10gal and a 20 long. I'm still undecided what I want to do with the 20 gal but my 10 gal is going to be a designated planted Dwarf Puff tank. For the 10 gal I'm running a basic aquon cheapo light, Aqua Clear 20, and a Marineland Stealth 50 watt. For right now I don't have any live plants planted, so for now it's filled with a fake log, a fake rock cave and a mix of plastic and silk plants.

I got the tank put together and filled the tank. I was really impressed with the Eco Complete. I poured it straight from the bag into the tank without rinsing it and even with a full tank I never had even a slight amount of debris in the water. Next I pured in a whole bottle of Tetra Safestart. After the Safestart was added the tank went very cloudy. You could see little milky white objects floating all around in the water. This lasted for 15 minutes and the tank is crystal clear again.

I just performed a water test and here are my results:

Temp: 80
PH: 8.3
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: .25ppm
Amonia: .5ppm

This is the first time I've tried using a "bacteria in a bottle" but it looks like my tank is going to cycle overnight. I'm going to go pick up a few plants tomorrow, Java Fern and a few Anubias.

Safestart is to be used right before adding fish or the bacteria will starve. It's also best added directly to the filter.

I've been putting Seachem Stability into mine but I've also added ammonia from the bottle and they are making nitrites like crazy so far (been 2 weeks now)

Welcome to the forum!