Your current Fish tank Setups!

Rainmaker said:
Thanks very much. I've dropped it back to 25 (from 26) and will change it to 24 tomorrow so it's not too sudden for them. Does the 25% water change and Easy-Balance sound like a good plan considering I'm now (potentially) basically performing damage limitation?

ETA: By the way it was the LFS who set the heater and told me not to change it. I see a pattern emerging... :/
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Personally if you've got ammonia/nitrites in the water, i'd do a bigger (and more frequent) water changes, probably better than putting more chemicals in the water!
 
The bottles of bacteria generally do work, the fact that you are seeing nitrate is proof.

If you have any left add it after the water change. You can not 'over dose' on that stuff, double, triple, quadruple dose will be fine. Still do the water change but no more than 50% as you will shift the PH as there is normally dissolved CO2 in tap water which will gas off over a a few hours.

I would not add any other fish, don't forget they will likely double in size over the next 12 months. Platy's are also likely to breed.

Do not change your PH with chemicals, your water with have a huge amount of buffering capacity due to the hardness and will just rise back up to 8.0 over time. Ignore the comment on RO water, completely overkill, especially for a 'my first aquarium'. Just leave it as it is and keep fish that suit your water such as Molly's, Guppy's and Platy's

The best thing you can do is just keep testing the water, do small feedings over the next week or two and do a few water changes and you will be fine.
 
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b0rn2sk8 said:
The bottles of bacteria generally do work, the fact that you are seeing nitrate is proof.

If you have any left add it after the water change. You can not 'over dose' on that stuff, double, triple, quadruple dose will be fine. Still do the water change but no more than 50% as you will shift the PH as there is normally dissolved CO2 in tap water which will gas off over a a few hours.

I would not add any other fish, don't forget they will likely double in size over the next 12 months. Platy's are also likely to breed.

Do not change your PH with chemicals, your water with have a huge amount of buffering capacity due to the hardness and will just rise back up to 8.0 over time. Ignore the comment on RO water, completely overkill, especially for a 'my first aquarium'. Just leave it as it is and keep fish that suit your water such as Molly's, Guppy's and Platy's

The best thing you can do is just keep testing the water, do small feedings over the next week or two and do a few water changes and you will be fine.
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A great and helpful reply, thank you! I actually already did a 50% water change this evening. I bought 40 litres of mineral water (£1 per 5 litres in Tesco). I had a choice of pH 7.2 and pH 6.3 so I went with the latter. The logic was that adding 50% pH 6.3 into 50% pH 8.0 should go some way to balancing them out (acid into base). To be honest in hindsight for such a small tank (80 litres) I wish I'd just gone for a nice pH 7.x mineral water completely. It's what I used to do for my imported Bettas (slightly acidic mineral water, add conditioner and almond leaf, done).

Although I did use a bottle of API quick start stuff for bacteria initially (it's a three day course), the water conditioner I'm using now actually has multiple functions. It's Interpet Tap Safe Plus (or something along those lines), and clears chlorine, chloramine, copper and heavy metals, and also coats the fish with aloe, and also - more importantly here - has nitrifying bacteria cultures. I added 1ml to each five litre bottle and then did a slow, steady 50% change. The fish seem happy as Larry and I'll do another round of water tests tomorrow to see what the state of play is.

Lesson learnt. Our tap water is the Devil's work for most species; stick to an appropriate mineral supply you can purchase on an ongoing basis from a named spring. Fingers crossed everything balances out OK over the week. I've not fed them at all today, though the platies are predictably nibbling the plants. I have a jar of New Life Solutions micro pellets (0.5mm) coming tomorrow which is very high quality and should help keep pollution down.

Thanks again for all the advice. :)

ETA The platies are all females so no worries of breeding. Arc@css' link on neons suggests that the one that died may have had neon tetra disease. It hid at the bottom rear of the tank in the plants before it died, refusing to school, and then just rolled over. I pulled it out immediately before any others had chance to nibble (and catch it), but another is now hiding at the back and the blue stripe is dull.
 
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Does anyone use this plant and/or a vac to keep their tank clear

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Malt_Vinegar said:
I would put £100 on them breeding within three months...
Rabbits wish they could breed like live bearers..
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It's a good job I didn't take that bet!... I added two gardnerii Killifish and a pair of double red A. agassizii dwarf cichlids today. Just as I was closing the top something moved in the plants. Wait, I didn't buy you... Or you... Or... Oh. :o The male cichlid seems to think they're delicious, and I've only seen one all day since then. Oops.
 
Looking for some advice please

Had a water test kit by Tetra for pond and tank... It did PH, Nitrite (possibly nitrate, can't remember) and Ammonia

I was looking for something new as that ran out and saw a lot of people recommending this

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000255NCI/ref=ask_ql_qh_dp_hza

What are your views on it? Why does it have two for PH? And what if the PH is above the 8.8 for the high kit?

Hope someone can help / advise :)
 
Thats perfect for freshwater, the two ph kits cover neutral -to lower and neutral to higher ph. Different fish like different ph

Dont personally use api for saltwater as not accurate enough
 
I will go against the norm here and say I would recommend the strips over the liquid tests.

There easier to use and are far less hassle which means your more likely to actually use them properly and are accurate enough for home use and give you a decent ball park.

The API liquid test kits are not particularly accurate either and the Seachem, JBL and Salifert tests are much more expensive and some of the tests are even more of a pain to use than the API.

That is why I would always recommend test strips over the others.
 
I read something online also about someone saying that the strips are better, as although they're not as accurate, they're accurate enough to know there's a problem

Is there no decent, well priced digital solution yet? I previously looked at Seneye but it doesn't do everything and you need to buy the slides each month.

I found a good thing on Amazon that digitally reads the pH but unfortunately it only existed for pH. I'm guessing detecting the rest of the stuff is more tricky to do with simple electronics only

Arc@css I'll check that link later, it's all horribly formatted on my phone for some reason
 
Got everything you see in the image below for £120 inc fish and everything else, plus load of extras, filters, testers, food, the lot! they are moving abroad so wanted rid. I plan to get a 3d background, or just move away from the print background, anyone had success in making one? I also would like to add sand as a substrate, I have read that play sand is a great cheap option, has anyone else done this?

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