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I did the exact same thing. You'll need to completely break down and drain the tank. You'll want to rinse it thoroughly and give the inside glass a really good wipe down and scrub with a wet rag don't use any soaps. You'll also want to rinse your gravel again as well as all the plant you had inside of it. Those surfactants don't just go away, they will be stuck to everything in the tank, walls, gravel, decorations. Changing water won't get rid of them either. Adding fishing with surfactants in there it'll be like having dawn soap inside your tank. Go to ace hardware and get their janitorial strength ammonia, it's exactly what you need, no surfactants or fragrance. Just ammonia and water. Tony Doughnuts fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Oct 14, 2016 |
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Oct 14, 2016 14:10
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Ugh, was afraid you'd say that. Better safe than sorry I suppose. What about the plants and filter media? Toast? Edit- saw the plant thing oops
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Oct 14, 2016 14:19
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Filter media I would replace or throughly rinse to be safe.
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Oct 14, 2016 16:05
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Hrm - is there really any advantage to rinsing instead of outright replacing? If I can hold on to some bacteria and not have another month to wait, that'd be great. But if rinsing the poo poo out of it is just going to get rid of all the bacteria I have so far, and still have a chance of holding some surfactants, I suppose I may as well replace it.
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Oct 14, 2016 20:21
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Tony Doughnuts posted:Why not just use play sand from the hardware store? There's really not a whole lot of choice around here, no big box stores, no chain petstores, no one selling pool filter sand (which I think would have been nice to try). Not enough people to make it worth having much variety of anything out here. Thunder God Biden posted:Hi goons. So I am in the middle of a fishless cycle for a 5 gallon tank in which I intend to keep one betta and maybe an amano shrimp or two. I have dwarf hairgrass that seems to be hanging in there, 2 amazon swords and 2 java ferns. Problem is, I realized I was dosing with ammonia that has "surfactants." Am I totally boned, or can I get away with a sizeable water change and not kill the critters I intend to stick in here? Ouch! At least it's a small tank, should be pretty easy to tip it out and give it a good enough scrub and many rinses. Very often in this hobby we end up learning things the hard way but that's just part of the process. No real harm done in this case, just a pain in the arse and a bit of a set back. The bacteria should grow back pretty soon, it's absolutely everywhere and just rinsing won't get rid of all of it (after all they don't let surgeons "just rinse" before they operate, right?). But it wouldn't hurt to replace the media to be safe, and that way you can keep rinsing the soapy set and have them as spares for some future time. Depending on what kind of media it is, of course, if its cheap to replace, your time is worth more than that. Also I don't think you have to get the surfactant levels down to 0 parts per million, after all there are guppies living in gutters and drainage ditches full of soapy water in some parts of the world. Maybe rinse it about as much as you'd rinse your own eyeball, if you'd gotten soap in your eye? Don't worry about losing your bacteria, it really is everywhere and as long as it has food and the conditions are right, it will grow exponentially to use up the resources it finds available. You can cycle your tank without using bottled ammonia, if you're unable to get hold of any - just a pinch of fish food or a small piece of raw shrimp, prawn or fishmeat will do since as it rots the proteins will degrade into ammonia. Bottled ammonia is definitely the best way to get your ammonia levels up in a measured and scientific way though, assuming you are following a procedure to regularly measure your levels and watch for peaks of ammonia and nitrites. I tried that the very first time I set up a new tank, but couldn't get any ammonia and made do with fish food and it worked out okay. Ever since then I've cycled new filters the same way, using fish poo water and filter squeezings from my existing tanks, and as many fast growing plants as I can get. The canister for my new tank has been dosed up with some really grungy filter floss from another tank but I'm not going to assume thats done and dusted before I put fish in. I'll still do some testing and when I do add fish I'm planning to keep the bioload small until I'm sure everything is working.    It's still a little cloudy but definitely improved over yesterday. Got a few plants in already to see how the flow of the wavemaker works, it does a pretty nice job of moving the water around and it doesn't seem too strong. I'm not going to bother filling the tank any further until my new sand comes though.
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Oct 14, 2016 21:03
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I just ordered one of those sun sun canisters online for 65 bucks with all filter media included. Should be here in a week or two  I'll run through yank with both filters for awhile until the canister has the proper schmoo buildup in it. I also picked up a pair of clown loaches to help with my runaway sail problem. They're still adjusting and are super shy.i know they are susceptible to ich so I preemptively dosed a small amount of ich medicine in the tank so here's hoping. I also have half a dozen assassin snails on order that will be here in a few weeks because I doubt the clowns will be able to manage the snails by themselves.
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Oct 15, 2016 17:17
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Tony Doughnuts posted:I just ordered one of those sun sun canisters online for 65 bucks with all filter media included. The instructions are awful and hilariously labeled.
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Oct 15, 2016 19:28
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Azuth0667 posted:The instructions are awful and hilariously labeled. NEVER DO NOT WET ELECTRIC KEEP SMALL CHILD FROM CHOKE
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Oct 15, 2016 19:33
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Hello! Long-time thread lurker here. I've been keeping fish for a year and a half at this point, though I am still figuring out some things (names tend to evade me, specially those of plants, I can recognize cabomba and watersprite but everything else is "that long background plant with tiny leaves" or "this small palm-shaped thing"). Currently we own three planted aquariums, though we started with the biggest of all, a 100L (26 g) that my boss, a big aquarium enthusiast, lent us to care for while he moved house and ended up selling to us. This one currently hosts a variety of fishes, most of them surviving from larger batches, which explains why some groups are not as large as they should: seven one-line pencilfish, around ten platies (which were born on the tank, but only grew to half the size of a normal platy and all developed gonopodiums, I am still not clear on why that happened but they don't seem to mind), two old-ish cardinal tetras from an original group of six, a zebrafish, four harlequin tetras and a rosy tetra, which came alone with the original set-up. I know he is a group fish, he's very timid and hiding due to that (even though he is way bigger than everything else), but I have never ever seen the species for sale in the LFS around here so he's pretty much alone. There's also a couple of ancystrus and three male and two (giant) female amano shrimp around. It is also way overgrown and will be needing a trimming rather soon: The second tank, a 50L (13g) was purchased in order to keep the platy fry away from the adults. Plants are a bit leaf-depleted, I am guessing due to lack of light. Used to be fine but we had to put a methacrylate lid on it, which I guess reflects quite a fair bit of the rather lacking PL light that came with the setup. Current inhabitants are five X-ray tetras and two pairs of Endler guppies, two amano shrimp and four red cherries.  Third tank started four months ago a nano project (18L, 4.7g) intended to be a nano-scape and house some red cherry shrimp. Turns out it did neither, because I had no test kits at the time and underestimated the effect of soft tap water + ADA soil (lowers hardness) so I did water changes with distilled water  . Long story short, a couple days after two batches of tiny cherries were born, water changes were done which unstabilized the system, shrimp and plants started dying, which in turn (and coupled with the terrible filter that came with the kit) caused ammonia to spike and sent everything to hell. I held onto it and tried to fix it until I was down to five cherries out of twelve, at which point I cut my losses and moved the survivors to the 13g. One male died but the remaining, three females and one male, are doing well and one of them is even berried again  . The tank itself was teared down to take them out, but I had no heart to dismantle it just in case any shrimplets had somehow survived, so I changed the filter to a much better one, cleaned out all dead plant matter, put the rocks and new plants back in place and let it start cycling.  And to everyone's surprise, around a week later, some guys turned up  ... They are about a month old and have already survived the hardness crashing, me removing all rocks at least thrice (and not finding them, just a bunch of very dead siblings) and all the cycling. Way more than expected too, last count was twelve and they are rather hard to find when they hide. Tank parameters are currently stable, no nitrites nor nitrates, and I added some cuttlebone which they eat for calcium. No more deaths either. Rather scary as a first shrimp experience, but in the end it worked well I suppose 
Shellception fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Oct 16, 2016 |
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Oct 16, 2016 15:34
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Jiru posted:
Is that Ohko stone you've got there? Looks really nice. That's a sweet setup.
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Oct 16, 2016 17:11
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Chichevache posted:Is that Ohko stone you've got there? Looks really nice. That's a sweet setup. It is! Thanks. It was an attempt to do an iwagumi-style nano, though it's not too canonical and not as nicely planted either. But I like it .
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Oct 17, 2016 08:59
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Doesnt that stocking get clogged pretty fast? Anyone got any suggestions on how to make aquarium water unappealing to cats? One of my idiots just loves lapping at it. Synthbuttrange fucked around with this message at 11:54 on Oct 17, 2016 |
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Oct 17, 2016 11:04
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Synthbuttrange posted:Doesnt that stocking get clogged pretty fast? Not really, but yeah, it needs a rinse every now and then. The filter can handle it for the most part. Also the shrimplets love to clear the debris out of the stocking. It's a bit of a crappy solution, but it works. About the cat question, no idea, sorry. Our cats do not care about the tanks, luckily...
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Oct 17, 2016 12:21
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Synthbuttrange posted:Anyone got any suggestions on how to make aquarium water unappealing to cats? One of my idiots just loves lapping at it. I have no idea, mine love it as well, they seem super attracted to the manky bucket of brown water from after I've rinsed out my filter media too. They sulk when I shoo them away and try to sneak back for more as soon as I turn my back. I tried using just a little bit of water in the bottom so they wouldn't be able to reach to drink it and all that resulted in was the bucket being light enough for the cat to tip it all over the floor. Hi Jiru! I like your overgrown tank, that's pretty much what I wish all my tanks would look like. Not that I have anything against Japanese style aquascapes but for me I would rather have a glass box full of greenery since my garden outside is pretty much brown dry and dead.
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Oct 17, 2016 18:30
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Synthbuttrange posted:Anyone got any suggestions on how to make aquarium water unappealing to cats? One of my idiots just loves lapping at it. Push it in
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Oct 18, 2016 00:36
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He's already fallen in once, hasnt dissuaded him.
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Oct 18, 2016 00:45
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You could try putting tape sticky side up on the hood of the aquarium so it annoys hums when he tries to climb up of covering the lid with a towel so they can't get at it. The reason they drink from the the tank is because the prefer moving water to drink from. You could also try letting them drink from a faucet or get them a fountain to drink from to entice them.
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Oct 18, 2016 05:02
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I got bowls and fountains all over the place and it isnt even moving water, it's a nano fishbowl, pushing plants aside to get at the water. Dammit cat you're a moron.
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Oct 18, 2016 05:09
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This cat is clearly feeding off of your annoyance rather than getting anything out of the fish water itself.
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Oct 18, 2016 13:55
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Actually the last time he got girardia and super runny shits which caused the other cat to also have super runny shits because of the cross contamination from using the same litterboxes and they nearly pooped themselves to death it was super fun and extremely poop. 
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Oct 18, 2016 13:57
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Have you tried simply turning off the TV, sitting down with your cats, and hitting them?
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Oct 18, 2016 14:51
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Update: So I started over. Rinsed off all my plants, the filter, and the heater, ditched the old substrate, changed the filter, etc. My amazon swords are starting to look rough, I don't think they are gonna make it.  But the dwarf hairgrass has a chance, and I'm fairly certain these java ferns and the marimo moss ball will outlive us all. Now just the waiting, waiting, waiting. I dosed the tank with GOOD ammonia, from Ace Hardware (thanks Tony) on Sunday. It seems to be hanging out in the "bright green" area that might be 2 ppm, might be 4? Haven't added more, no change. I know it will take longer than this but waiting suuuuuucks and I want to hang out with my new fish friend Jackson who I haven't met yet!
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Oct 18, 2016 17:56
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What you'll see for quite a few days is a whole lot of nothing just keep the PPM of the ammonia between 4 and 5 which is going to be a darker green on the scale and then one day it'll just be gone or extremely low and when you see the ammonia start to drop then you want to start testing for nitrites and nitrates what you'll see is a large Spike and nitrites and nitrates over a week or so and then once they get too high for your kid to read you want to do a 90% water change or so and then you'll be able to get the levels down to a readable level once you get there you'll want to just keep dosing up to 4 to 5 ppm. on the ammonia until you can process that end in 24 hours and have no ammonia no nitrites and some nitrates below 40 PPM
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Oct 18, 2016 18:28
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OK I'll see if I can push to juuuuuuust a bit greener. I didn't want to go too far because I read too much ammonia could stop the process altogether. Hey has anyone decorated with one of these? Looks like it'd be decent enough for a fish to hide in and around, but wouldn't crowd the poo poo out of a 5.5 gallon.
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Oct 18, 2016 19:55
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I've seen that one before. Personally I'm not a fan of artificial decorations but that's just my taste. It's quite sizable for a 5 gallon or I would say that 10 gallon that's going to be a little too big it's going to take up a lot of room and not leave you with very many options. Personally if you're looking for something for the fish to hide in I would just go with some Sheetrock and a couple small rocks to prop it up and make a cave / lean-to sort of structure. But that's just my two cents
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Oct 18, 2016 22:59
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Artificial deco can be fun! This is one of my tanks from a few years back. I tore it down and use the 55g as a sump now, but I'm tempted to pick up another 55 during the $1/g sale and set it back up again.
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Oct 19, 2016 01:05
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Enos Cabell posted:Artificial deco can be fun! This is one of my tanks from a few years back. I tore it down and use the 55g as a sump now, but I'm tempted to pick up another 55 during the $1/g sale and set it back up again. Haha this is so fun to look at Here's a cruddy picture of Horse's new setup  He was in a 2.5 UK gallon tank initially but I started to feel guilty that maybe it was too small, so when I saw this 5 gallon tank at a car boot sale for £3 I thought he'd be happier in there. It's heavily planted because I'm not anticipating it will all survive because I'm super new at this and bad with plants, hopefully it'll be okay. He's inspecting everything extremely thoroughly and flaring at me when I lean in to take a look at him, I don't know if that's a good sign or not. Hope he's okay with the change, I feel bad that he's moved into new digs twice in only a few months but this should be it now. Had a condensation tray custom cut from acrylic for an absolute pittance and I'm just waiting for some clips to arrive to hold it in place and it'll be complete 
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Oct 19, 2016 02:51
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Synthbuttrange posted:Actually the last time he got girardia and super runny shits which caused the other cat to also have super runny shits because of the cross contamination from using the same litterboxes and they nearly pooped themselves to death it was super fun and extremely poop. Same guy kept going to the public pool during this, too. Build-a-Boar posted:Haha this is so fun to look at
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Oct 19, 2016 04:17
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Fish Noise posted:It's even better on video showing off that fixture's storm mode. Hah, I forgot I made a video of that. https://youtu.be/6Lb_3Fij6Yk
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Oct 19, 2016 06:05
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The only thing that tank was missing was a disco ball
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Oct 19, 2016 06:24
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Hey do ramshorn egg blobs dissolve on their own or do you have to scrape them off?
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Oct 19, 2016 07:31
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I think ramshorn egg clusters have a cover that hardens and falls off once the eggs hatch (or if fish suck them off and eat the eggs) and they don't seem to dissolve. I've seen tiny worms living in egg jelly so I think the soft stuff does get eaten eventually.
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Oct 19, 2016 09:22
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Got one of my 55s with some albino yellow lab fry. A backup tank in case my main tank crashes, you know? I had to get rid of all but the breeding pair of julie dickfeldi, but it's always funny how you can't sell the rare poo poo but people are more than happy to take it if you're just giving it away. gently caress you assholes, I donated them to a club box trade. Good luck finding midnight blues now, fuckers! They're pretty much extinct in Lake Tang!
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Oct 20, 2016 01:50
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The extra sand that I ordered didn't get here this week and the vine wood has only just started sinking so I haven't got any new pictures of the tank I'm setting up. I got a message from my sister on Thursday night which was simply this picture:  That looks like ich to me! She's only got purple gravel in that tank not sand so it isn't just a dusty fish. I told her to start turning up her heat and start adding salt, and to get an airstone going. We weren't sure how her neons and rasboras would take it but the ich would spread and kill everything so better to do something than nothing. She reckoned one of her tetras looked like it had irritated gills too which could also be the beginnings of ich. The catfish has been off his food for a couple of days. Friday she sent me a progress report:   Finished putting in the salt and the gradual temperature change. All the fish are noticeably livelier and seem happy. Saturday progress:   The bigger spots are pieces of food. There are still tiny spots visible but that's to be expected as the ichs lifecycle plays out. Appetite is back! Sunday progress:  So far so good! She's got her salt levels at 3ppt and temperature at 30C and I'm thinking a week should be long enough to clear out the ich - does that sound about right?
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Oct 23, 2016 05:16
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Yeah looking good.  at that algae though.
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Oct 23, 2016 05:31
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She's got the back wall under the filter outlet covered with it, which looks pretty nice rippling in the current. It stays short so it's some kind of brush algae. I took some home to see if my shrimp would like it and it just dies off in my tanks. It got out of hand and now it's trapping food in the gravel so she's planning to toss the whole substrate. Hard to find the time since she's got two little kids. Hopefully she puts in something nicer than purple gravel, but she's had that cory for three years on it and his barbels seem okay. Anyway definitely that tank will need a good vacuum to get rid of the dead ich. She hadn't added anything new so it must have been in her tank at a low level for ages.
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Oct 23, 2016 07:08
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 Took the old anubias and whatever mini pellia was left that wasn't infested with hair algae and restarted my 4 gallon tank. Going to keep this strictly inverts.
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Oct 23, 2016 08:30
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Enos Cabell posted:Artificial deco can be fun! This is one of my tanks from a few years back. I tore it down and use the 55g as a sump now, but I'm tempted to pick up another 55 during the $1/g sale and set it back up again. Not too much a fan of artificial deco, but this is so deliciously over-the-top it looks awesome. So many colors. A very stupid question, but I honestly can't make out what the brightly-colored neon fishies to the center-left are. Are they real, living fishes or part of the deco? I think I have never seen them around there. Synthbuttrange posted:
Also liking this a lot. Simple yet appealing, I think it will look even better as soon as the anubias grow a bit.
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Oct 23, 2016 13:52
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Hey gang, I'd like my tetras to be happier. I'm a bit of an aquarium novice, and want to start doing a good job here. I have a 15 g tank, which has 6 tetras in it (I think this should be ok volume for them?). They've been doing ok for several months now, but mostly hang about at the bottom of the tank, swimming quite low down and being less active than they might be. They seem a bit perkier in the mornings. The tank temp is 21C. The ammonia, nitrate and nitrite levels all seem to read 0ppm using my testing kit. The pH seems to be a tad high for these fish, at maybe 7.4 to 7.8, but I'm not sure how to bring that down. I try to do weekly ~20% water changes. I want these guys swimming about happy. I thought to add taller plants, to encourage them to swim higher, so I put in the grass-like plants at the back left a few days ago. I was going to add more maybe? At the same time I also added a light to keep the plants happy, and let me see the what's going on in the tank better, but I think it's too bright for the fish and they have acting pretty scared. I was going to maybe tape over some of the LEDs to dial the light back if they don't relax? I think I overfeed them, so I've been trying to cut down on that. They now get a small sprinkle of "red mico colour sticks bloodworm-like extruded food" every second day. Does that seem right? There are a ton of snails in the tank, which I try to keep under control but which seems like a fools errand. Where am I loving up?  Also, I have this blue crystal stuff called Showmaster Water Conditioner which I assume is metal salts, but there isn't any info on the tube, and I'm not seeing much info online. Anyone got advice on what it is and whether I should be using it?
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Oct 23, 2016 13:52
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Ruptured Yakety Sax posted:Hey gang, I'd like my tetras to be happier. I'm a bit of an aquarium novice, and want to start doing a good job here. Overall, for what I know you are doing things right. You have no ammonia or nitrites so they shouldn't be stressed about water parameters. The pH thing is mostly orientative, in my opinion; some delicate fish may stress over it, but tetras tend to be hardy and adapt to different conditions fairly well (that is the reason some of them were used as "cycling fish" in past times, they can survive pretty nasty water), and you actually have almost neutral water, not on the acid or basic extremes, so I doubt that's the problem (anybody feel free to correct me if I am wrong on this). I have never used water conditioners, but I doubt they'd harm your fish - some inverts may be sensitive to them, but even then I think it's mostly safe for everything. What kind of tetras are they (neon, x-ray, cardinals...)? If anything, tetras tend to be big cowards if they don't feel secure. That doesn't mean they are ill, just won't venture out and about. Six seems a reasonable number for your aquarium, depending on their size maybe a couple more could be added, since they feel more secure in bigger numbers. Adding as much plant cover as you can is actually a good idea, if they like to hide, giving them places to do so will encourage them to explore the aquarium. The intense light will scare them too in my experience, but they should get used to it; maybe reduce the amount of light time at first and increase it gradually over a couple of weeks to make them feel more confident? And finally, some species just like to hang near the bottom: my x-ray tetras will just swim in place all together near the bottom for long periods of time. EDIT: If you want a fast-growing, dense plant that they tend to like, try watersprite. It is a bit delicate to handle since it breaks easily and turns brown and ugly when damaged, but grows rather well under moderate light and does not need special care apart from a bit of trimming to eliminate excess and damaged leaves. Shellception fucked around with this message at 14:42 on Oct 23, 2016 |
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Oct 23, 2016 14:36
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