Fish in Cycling

FishyFishy89

I have 6-8 VERY young angels likely getting shipped to me next Monday. I WAS fishless cycling the 75 gal and I had sent hubby to get fetch the 20 gal from storage. Well, hubby broke the 20 gal.

As of this morning, the salvina is my 75 appears to have soaked up 1ppm ammonia. The tank had 4ppm ammonia yesterday and this morning appears to have 3ppm. I'm getting a bushel of Anacharis tonight. I PRAY that will take advantage of the ammonia currently in the tank overnight.

Right now I have a tall 6.5 gal bucket, a short 3 gal bucket and a large leaking kritter keeper(in the process of getting fixed. I am likely going to have to fish in cycle this 75. I really DON'T want to do this. But being that I have no choice. The babies would have to sit in something else while that cycles anyhow, possibly getting exposed to their own ammonia and getting daily water changes.

I'm hoping the plants will pick up anything that will harm the babes. Any advice to make this fish in cycle the least impact on these babies?

Thanks!

Nilet699

Masses of plants. Lots off floating Water Sprite and plant Green Cabomba.....both super fast growing and therefore fast absorption rates.
Go with some bottled bacteria too, it has been proven to work.
Daily testing and water changes if the plants aren't picking any of it up, but with lots of the above, I'd imagine they will.

FishyFishy89

Hm....none of the stores near me carry Water Sprite. I may just have to float Anacharis. It's profile states it is similar to the Water Sprite.

Byron

Agree with Nile. Any floating plants help. And one of hte good bacterial supplements. Dr. Tim's One and Only, Tetra's SafeStart, or Seachem's Stability.

But also, do a major water change to get rid of the present ammonia. I assume you have added ammonia somehow, and you want to get rid of that before any fish go in the tank. Don't rely on the plants for this; they may or may not take it all up, plus that will mean they are not looking for more when the fish start releasing ammonia/ammonium.

Byron.

FishyFishy89

Yes, I did add pure ammonia. I was planning on fishless cycling the tank. I got some Seachem's Stability tonight and some Hornwort. PetsMart nearly sold out on their Anacharis. And what Anacharis was left looked really pathetic and nearly dead.

I will be doing a huge water change the day before the angels get here. I really appreciate the responses. It helps alot.

JDM

Well, apparently you may need to watch for the stealth nitrite spike.

If you go with lots of plants and not too many fish the ammonia may never show up in your testing but the nitrites might, so keep testing for them as well. I started skipping the nitrite test recently and shouldn't have.

Jeff.

1077

Ideally, you would not order fish before having cycled aquarium to place them in.
If these are small nickel sized to quarter sized Angelfish which will be placed in the uncyled tank,,then
Perhap's they might not create too much ammonia too quickly, but would monitor the water daily,and feed small to tiny amount once a day or every other day. My next move would be to order more plant's from place you ordered fish from if they also sell plant's.
Grab up plant's from local fish store's if available.

FishyFishy89

Yes I know, I likely shouldn't have ordered the angels. I couldn't pass up such a deal that I had found.

And the auction states they're pea-sized. I realize they may not produce a whole lot of ammonia, but being that they're babies, I naturally worry over them.

jenste

Those are very young angels if peasized. No more than 1.5-2 months old. At this age they are still very sensitive to water conditions so besides doing a LARGE water change, acclimate them very very slowly.

Did the seller tell you what they were currently feeding on?
My guess would be crushed flake and frozen brineshrimp for this age (that is what my current peasized angels are feeding on). You can put frozen bloodworms through a quick blender cycle to break them up more also.

JDM

If I were squeamish I would be "OOOOOOOoooooo yuck".

Jeff.