New (small) fishtank - cycling info required

MsFifers

Hi - on an impulse I bought a 14 litre fish tank on half price sale in the local pet shop. I set it up last night and have the filter running now, and put in the declorination drops and the conditioning drops that came with it.

I've been reading about cycling the tank but most of the info online seems to relate to proper aquarium set ups. I was just wondering - is there an easy way to cycle a tiny tank like mine that is only going to ever have one or two little fish in it? I don't really want to buy lots of little fish to be the sacrificial lambs.

Any good websites that anyone could recommend?

I don't even know what fish will be going in it yet!

siobhan.murphy

I did something similar,went to petmania saw an offer half price tank with 4 free fish!
set the tank up with the filter added the drops and waitied for four -five days before bring a sample of the water back to petmania to test,all was grand and they gave me the four free fish,happy enough swimming around,every week we have to clean out the filter,and take 20% of the water out then reill it with the conditioning drops.

MsFifers

Great! That sounds simple!

Just a matter of keeping the cats out of the tank then!

Wolfsberg

Just remember when it comes to the dechlorinator and biological booster it is more of a case of capfuls rather than drops! If you under-dose, you might as well not be using the stuff, and there is no real danger if you over-dose slightly! So read the directions carefully and calculate the proper doseage for your tank.

Guitareaxe

Hi it takes 2 weeks to cycle a tank. The smaller the tank the more maintainence as toxins build up fast in smaller bodies of water.

weekly 30 percent water changes would be a minimum for a small tank like yours.
If you want to speed up the process you can add some powderd up fish flake food. As it begins to rot it releases Ammonia, which will feed your growing bio culture. you only need to do this once. Perform a small water change before adding the new fish. Only add one fish at a time with around four days between each added fish as this will give your biofilter time to grow more bacteria to accomodate the newly increased bioload. Add too many fish at once and you get a filter crash - all dead.

Be sure to only wash out the filters once a month at most, or whenever they are clogged and running very slowly. if you overclean you will kill the bacteria which is required to break down the fish waste. I also highly recommend doing water changes with a gravel vaccume, ask in any petstore and they will tell you how to use one, they cost between 4-10 euro depending on size but are a must for any fishkeeper.

You can trust my advice I have worked in the pettrade and aquarium industry for a few years and have kept millions of fish, literally.

ANXIOUS

How do you clean a filter with out losing all the good bacteria?

Our man in Havana

take out the 30% water & rinse the filter sponge in this water - never under the tap.

ValerieR

Welcome to the world of fish keeping. 14 l is very small : it's harder to keep the water parameters steady and as mentioned in another post above, make sure you renew some water regularly. You might consider getting a test kit that enables you to measure the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels.
A lot of advice can be found in www.irishfishkeepers.com, an Irish based discussion forum on fish keeping.
Fish keeping is very addictive - I'd say very shortly, you'll be looking at getting a bigger tank
ValerieR

MsFifers

Thanks a million for all that advice! I'll do my best to keep things toxin free!

Looking forward now to when its all ready and picking out my little fish for my little tank!