Retirement and forum shutdown (17 Jan 2022)
Hi,
John Howell who has managed the forum for years is getting on and wishes to retire from the role of managing it.
Over the years, he has managed the forum through good days and bad days and he has always been fair.
He has managed to bring his passion for fish keeping to the forum and keep it going for so long.
I wish to thank John for his hard work in keeping the forum going.
With John wishing to "retire" from the role of managing the forum and the forum receiving very little traffic, I think we must agree that forum has come to a natural conclusion and it's time to put it to rest.
I am proposing that the forum be made read-only from March 2022 onwards and that no new users or content be created. The website is still registered for several more years, so the content will still be accessible but no new topics or replies will be allowed.
If there is interest from the ITFS or other fish keeping clubs, we may redirect traffic to them or to a Facebook group but will not actively manage it.
I'd like to thank everyone over the years who helped with forum, posted a reply, started a new topic, ask a question and helped a newbie in fish keeping. And thank you to the sponsors who helped us along the away. Hopefully it made the hobby stronger.
I'd especially like to thank John Howell and Valerie Rousseau for all of their contributions, without them the forum would have never been has successful.
Thank you
Darragh Sherwin
What type of Ammonia to use in cycling?
There are several schools of thought on cycling a tank ... and I am sure you will find that there are people who have other methods that are equally good as the ones below.
The idea is to create ammonia which will transform itself into nitrite and then into nitrate by the means of bacteria.
1./ Fishless Cycling
-If you can get a sponge or gravel from an already established tank, you will introduce the bacteria to your tank and cycle quicker.
- You can also add Nutrafin's Cycle to your tank which contains the bacteria and will help cycling your tank.
- You can also feed your tank with flakes, though there are no fish in the tank. The food will decompose, create ammonia and get the cycle going too.
- You can also add ammonia as shown by Essjay in irishfishkeepers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=949
2./ Cycling with fish
In theory, your water does not have any ammonia or nitrite when coming out of the tap. If you then add 6 hardy fish such as Danios in your 180l (use AquaPlus to dechlorinate) and do small water changes regularly (check your parameters to be sure they don't get exposed to too high levels of ammonia/nitrite), then, the bacteria will start developing and the cycle will start.
In my Rio180, this is what I have done :
The fish seems to be happy ...
Best of luck in your venture, plenty of learning to be done and also plenty of good people to help on this forum !
Valerie
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I was going to put fish in from day one using Tetra safestart but instead I put in the ammonium solution and a bottle and a half of tetra. Since I got a Tetratec EX700 external pump yesterday I'm going to wait for the bacterial colony to build up in both the internal and external filter. I also invested in an API master test kit and its a million times better than the other water test kit I was using. Now I know for sure that there are NO nitrites and NO nitrates in the tank while there is a stable amount of ammonia (4ppm) and it hasn't changed in the past two days.
I'll be testing daily waiting waiting waiting for it to go down...that will be an exciting day!! I just want to know if this cycle is actually working because at the moment its not doing anything....I'll just have to be patient and give it time eh!!
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