Clean slate, 5 gal tank stocking ideas?

iamntbatman

You need to keep adding an ammonia source to the tank such as fish food to keep the beneficial bacteria alive until you get some fish in there. A pinch of food a day (what you'd feed your fish normally or thereabouts) should be enough to supply some ammonia to those bacteria. If you've got no fish in there now, you could just crank the heater to 87 or 88* and cook the ich off before turning it back down for whatever fish you decide on. The brown stuff is probably just algae. Is there any way you could take a picture of the blue flaky looking stuff? The only thing that comes to mind with that is cyanobacteria but usually that grows on plants and other surfaces in the tank rather than on the surface of the water itself.

JMILLER

Thank you. Yes it's going to be heavily planted.

small echinda

Here is a high def jpeg of the in tank filter, the back part that looks blue ish to my eyes, a slight film over the water is apparent, and you can also see some light flaky shaped objects.

my nitrits have risen to 1.8 and the water is getting a little cloudy
(maybe because of the uneaten foods)

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	IMG_0238.jpg (112.2 KB, 18 views)

iamntbatman

Ah ok. That just looks like protein buildup to me. I wouldn't worry about it.

small echinda

i touched the surface of the water i guess my oils in my finger broke the tension of the waters suface, lol. it looked pretty cool. Im going to my LFS to check out some plants today, maybe some less cheesy gravels. i will return with pix!