Novice Advice Needed Please.

Hi Adam, welcome to forum 

I can answer some of your questions and give you a few pointers.

Cycling the tank -
Modern fish food is designed not to make much ammonia when it breaks down so it is not a very good ammonia source for cycling. And even if it did break down to make lots of ammonia, you have no way of knowing how much ammonia in terms of ppm per day it makes so you can't know how many bacteria you have grown.
A much better way of cycling is using a bottle of ammonia. Ebay and Amazon are good sources, and my local diy shop stocks Jeyes KleenOff Household Ammonia.
The way to use fish food or prawns is to add them to a bucket of water, wait for them to go off then measure the ammonia level of the water. Using that figure, calculate how much of the water in the bucket you need to get the tank level to 3 ppm.
Just a warning - API Quick Start may contain the right species of ammonia eating bacteria but the wrong species of nitrite eating bacteria. The use of the correct species has been copyrighted (or whatever the correct term is) so that only Dr Tims One & Only and Tetra Safe Start can use the correct species. This means you will grow ammonia eaters fairly quickly but then get stuck at the nitrite eater stage.


Air stones are mainly decorative. As long as the filter is moving the water round the tank so that it pushes the surface water across the tank, down the far side and back along the bottom of the tank, that is fine.
Air stones can be useful in heat waves or when treating diseases like whitespot which need higher water temps. The warmer the water the less oxygen it holds and the extra churning of the water caused by the bubbles helps more oxygen to dissolve.



Fish -
Small fish like galaxy rasboras (aka celestial pearl danios or cpd's) and salt & pepper cories (Corydoras habrosus) do better in larger shoals. You might have trouble finding shops that have salt & pepper cories. A commonly stocked alternative is pygmy cories, which again need at least 10.

Your list contains both hard water fish (guppies) and soft water fish (neons and cories). Have a look at your water company's website, that should have your hardness somewhere. Make a note of the number and also the unit. They could use one of half a dozen units, and you may need to convert their number to one of the two units used in fishkeeping. If they give the unit as mg/l, we also need to know if that's mg/l Ca or mg/l CaO or mg/l CaCO₃.
Let us know the hardness when you find it and we can see which fish are more suited to your water It will take a few weeks to cycle the tank so you have time to fine-tune your wish list.
As for your pH, is the figure you gave freshly run tap water or water that's stood a while? If it's from the tank and it was more than a few hours after you filled it, that counts as 'stood' water.

If you get all your fish at one go, you don't need a quarantine tank.
Tell us your rough location (north or east etc of the county is plenty) and if other members use shops in that locality they can advise on the better ones.


Quick question - what testers are you using? I ask because a nitrate of zero is unusual - most tap water has some, anything up to 50 ppm. Nitrate is the most common test to get wrong because with liquid reagent testers, one of the reagents settles out on the bottom of the bottle and failure to shake the bottle enough causes inaccurate readings.



Filter -
I have googled CF80 and it finds the Ciano CF80. Is this your filter?
I have not come across this filter before so I can't comment on how noisy it is compared to other filters. There is no silent filter but some are quieter than others. I use Eheim Biopowers in my 180 litre, their Aquaball filter range uses the same pumps and there is one suitable for 60 litres. They do hum a bit, more so if you get air trapped in the impeller well (tilt the filter while it is running to dislodge the air).
Other members may be able to recommend quieter filters.



Hmmm, and you thought you wrote a novel 

Hi Sue,

Thank you very much for your informative reply, it's greatly appreciated.

Would you suggest draining my tank and starting again after I order some ammonia and dr tims?

These are the measurements of unified utilities, north west. Sorry I'm not sure which one you needed from it

Analysis             Typical value   UK/EU limit   Units
Hardness Level     Very Soft      
Hardness Clarke     2.275                              Clarke
Aluminium             <6.60           200                   µg Al/l
Calcium             7.23                              mg Ca/l
Res.chlorine Ttl    0.94                              mg/l
Res.chlorine Free  0.85                              mg/l
Coliform bacteria.  0                    0                   number/100ml
Colour              <1.11            20                   mg/l Pt/Co scale
Conductivity       164            2500           uS/cm at 20oC
Copper               0.0401            2                   mg Cu/l
E.coli                0                    0                   number/100ml
Iron                       17.8           200                   µg Fe/l
Lead                       <0.317           10                   µg Pb/l
Magnesium       3.32                              mg Mg/l
Manganese       6.05           50                   µg Mn/l
Nitrate               2.05           50                   mg NO3/l
Sodium               23.1           200                   mg Na/l

The pH level i took was from 4 day old stood tank water, I haven't done out of the tap yet. I will do this and document and post below.

The testing kit is the API master kit and after your post i read about the bottle shake up/smash around which I didn't do i will certainly retest!

Thanks again for your help and please let me know if I need to run some man maths on the figures above, I just wasn't sure which reading you needed.

Regards,
Adam

Hi Adam 

Welcome to the hobby and to the forum. You’re in good company as my natural tendency is to write novels too but unfortunately I’m restricted to texting rather than typing at the moment which forces me to be briefer.

Thinkfish Fish Profiles section is excellent but you might find this http://www.seriouslyfish.com/knowledge-base/ helpful for cross-checking against any species you’re interested in, to see if your water hardness is suitable – you may need to do some conversions around unit of measurement. As your water is very soft, though, then a few suggestions which spring to mind are harlequin rasboras (or similar espei and hengeli rasbora), cherry barbs and most of the different tetra species.

As for filters, you might find this thread https://forums.thinkfish.co.uk/new-fishkeepers/best-filter-for-70-litre-tank/ helpful, and there may be other similar threads on this site too.

Quarantine tanks can be also very useful if any fish fall ill and need isolated for treatment – even a cheap, plastic one from The Range or ones marketed for children from pets/aquatic shops can be helpful. You’d need a spare heater and filter, though – always useful to have in the event that one breaks – and, once your filter is cycled, then filter media can be moved into the spare filter in the quarantine tank.

Hope that’s helpful.

Thanks again guys, I have just ordered some ammonia:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Concentrated-Aquarium-Ammonia-for-Fishless-Cycling-Fish-Tank-Use-High-Strength-/181130184497?_trksid=p2385738.m2548.l4275

I couldn't find the Dr Tims so I hope that will do the job

I will remove all the food tomorrow from the bottom and replace any water that comes out.

I have just done another test of the tank water and nitrite remains at zero, that's after shaking the life out of the bottle and hitting it against a wall (sounds daft but I read some advice). I thought i would test amonia while i was in there and that remains at 0.25. Tap water came in at 6.7pH.

I will hold fire after the clean up tomorrow until I get the ammonia and I will order a small first aid tank as advised.

Ill spend a while looking at other filters too as suggested, thanks guys!!

Adam

  didn't realise how much work was involved in setting up a new tank!

I can't wait till its up and running!

Yey! Pet swimmers!

Hi everyone! I'm Adam's other half. Been asking to get a fish tank for a few months, he finally agreed!

Hi there & welcome
Glad you finally managed to persuade him - and thanks for posting a picture, we love to see pictures of tanks and fish, and it saved us from having to be a bit pushy and insisting that you post 

Thank you!  I'm sure it'll look better when there's some swimmers in it! This seems like a really friendly and informative forum/community. Nice to meet you all!