Intro; Tank Heater; Fishless Cycling; Addressing Soft Water

hello everyone and thanks in advance for any help you could offer me.

i recently decided to bite the bullet and finally do something i have wanted to do in awhile now and become a fish-keeper, after a good hour in the shop trying to learn what i can could i purchased a Fluval Edge Aquarium 46L in Gloss White. first question it only shows up under cold water fish would it still be usable for tropical fish? like i was told in store.

second question if it can be used for tropical fish is about tank heaters i am a little confused with this to say the least and some info would be much appreciated (size, 1 or 2? and brands to look for.

thanks luke

The rule is 1 watt per litre, so you need a 50 w heater as Colin said. I have various makes of heater but the one I prefer is the Eheim Jager.




Most especially, don't believe the shop about what fish you can keep. The 46 litre Edge has a small footprint for the volume, so you need small fish that don't swim very fast.
It would also be a great help if you find your tap water's hardness. The simplest way to do that is to look on your water company's website., though some of them make it a bit hard to find. It will give the hardness in several units, if you tell us what they say make sure you give the units as well.

Fishless cycling is not only safer for fish and easier for the fishkeeper, it also gives you a while to visit every shop in the area to see what fish they stock, then make your choice from the fish that are available.

Hi Luke and welcome to the forum. 

While I was cycling my first tanks, and in between trips to the local aquatics centres, I also spent a lot of time on the community creator on this site. It's very useful and quite a lot of fun. The only down side was that I saw so many fish I liked that were suitable for the water in this area that I ended up going out and buying more tanks. Oops. 

SOFT
 Calcium17 Calcium Carbonate42 Degrees Clark (UK)2.94 Degrees German (dH)2.35 Degrees French (f)4.2

so new question cycling the tank i will be reading the link shortly but from what was said in the shop as i took it i should do the following -

.fully setup the tank / heater, filters, decorations, and gravel
.fill the tank and add tap safe and the bottle of ( fluval cycle biological enhancer 250ml that was provided
.wait 3 days
.then add the fish.

would this be correct ?

No! Absolutely not correct at all. I'm afraid this is typical of bad shop advice as biological enhancers do not work and three days is nowhere near long enough to establish a colony of bacteria that will convert ammonia to nitrite, and then nitrite to nitrate. This will take (usually) between 4 and 6 weeks. You should follow the link to the fishless cycling method posted earlier as this will ensure happy, healthy fish...... instead of dead ones .

Your water is incredibly soft and will have a very limited amount of buffering capacity. This means that the pH is likely to be unstable and you could easily get a pH crash where the tank water turns acidic very quickly...... and kills your fish .

So.... plan #1

Read up about cycling.
Get tester kits. I would recommend the API freshwater kit and (because of your super soft water) a KH & GH testing kit.
When the tester kits are through we can get an idea of your pH and KH and advise you on the next part of your set up. This might mean adding some calcarious minerals to increase the hardness of the water and raise the buffering capacity.

I know this seems like an awful lot and the temptation is to fill the tank and put fish in after three days..... but that is why so many people have an old aquarium in their loft after giving up the hobby 'cos of constant fish deaths.

Stick with us, follow our advice (please) and you'll have a really good looking tank full of healthy fish.

I'm still a relative newbie as I only started last October. Luckily I'd found this forum and was lurking as a guest prior to purchasing fish. I cannot emphasise enough how much useful experience and advice is available from the people here, who have not only been keeping fish for a long time, but have also kept up with advances in fish keeping technology and methodology, and that is very important.
It is only be learning so much from this forum that I have been able to consider the advice I have been given at my local stores and narrow down the LFS I visit to the two that I trust.
Best of luck with your tank, and please feel free to post lots of pics at any time. 

wow blown away with how much knowledge you all have  .

@Paddyc @Sue

trust me i'm in no rush to fill the tank quickly and add fish if i am going to do this i would rather it gets done properly much to my wife and kids disappointment and maybe a touch of mine .

with the heaters on there way id just like to confirm with you guys what i need now then if that's ok (maybe a link or 2 if you have it) so i can start working on the water.

tropical marine gravel (med bag?)
bottle of ammonia (how much would be needed?)
bicarb soda (done)
testing kit (API freshwater kit + KH & GH testing kit) would those cover all my testing needs?

am i missing anything else?

@Sue quick question for yourself you mention that you had your ph drop way down how would you go about solving this if the fish are in the tank as i'm scared this may happen after reading about soft water?

and again thanks for all the help all of you much appreciated.

The reason I had a pH crash was because I was overstocked and very lazy about water changes (once every 3 to 4 weeks). Both of those allowed nitrate and other acidic things like fish hormones to build up. I have a KH of 3 German deg, and it got used up leaving nothing to buffer the pH so it dropped.
I learned my lesson and now do at least 25% water changes every week without fail.

If you use something in your tank made of calcium carbonate, that will help the same thing happening to you. You could use paddy's substrate or crushed coral; a piece of limestone or tufa rock (like fcmf) as decoration, or shells. They'll all dissolve slowly increasing both GH and KH.

If you don't want the expense of buying your own GH and KH testers, you already know the GH from your water company's website and you could get a sample of tap water tested for KH at a fish shop. If it is the same as mine or above (3 german deg/54 ppm) you'll be OK with weekly water changes. If it is below 3, I'd think about those things I suggested above.



The API master kit contains everything you need - pH and high pH (you'll just need one of those depending on how high or low your pH is) ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. The nitrate instructions say to shake bottle #2 for 30 secs before use and then shake the tube for 1 min before starting the 5 min timer. Shake the bottle for longer than 30 secs, and tap it on the worktop as well. It contains a reagent that settles out on the bottom; tapping breaks it up and the shaking is to redissolve it. Not shaking it enough is the major cause of inaccurate nitrate readings 

As for ammonia, you won't need much with 46 litres. I get my Kleen Off Household Ammonia from my local DIY shop, but that comes in just one size of 500 ml for £2.50. Homebase used to sell it in their stores in the home cleaning section - if there's still a Homebase near you. Failing that, Ebay and Amazon. There is one seller on Ebay selling bottles of super concentrated ammonia for fishless cycling - it's 35% ammonia while most other solutions are 9.5%.
If you get 9.5%, you'll need 1.45 ml for a 3ppm dose and 0.5 ml for the 1ppm smaller dose; with that 35% solution, you'd need 0.39 and 0.13 ml. You can get baby medicine dosing syringes from a chemist shop to measure amounts that small. Remember the baby medicine bit - I got a very funny look when I asked for just a syringe 

Have you added the bicarb yet? You need 2 x 5ml spoonfuls for 46 litres. I recently did a fishless cycle in a 25 litre tank and found 1 spoonful was plenty for that size.



To start the cycle, you need:
- water
- dechlorinator, also called water conditioner. This is to remove the chlorine or chloramine the water company adds to kill bacteria, and you don't want it to kill the bacteria you'll be trying to grow
- ammonia, and a syringe to measure it with
- test kit
- thermometer to make sure the water is in the high 20s for cycling. The kind that go inside the tank with red liquid inside are more accurate than those stick on the outside ones. Very few heaters are calibrated so that the number on the dial = the water temp. Most are a few degrees out. Go by the thermometer not the heater setting.


That's enough for one post or you'll suffer word indigestion 

Moderator fcmf "split" this thread at this point to create a separate thread specifically on the issue of "Addressing soft water".   

You beat me to it... I made a note to myself this afternoon to come on the laptop and tidy up once Abbie was in bed... Good job 

Start the cycling process. Careful with NitrIte and NitrAte - we're easily confused!

Which KH & GH kit are you using? I'm using the Nutrafin one and the conversion from drops to ppm are different for them both..... which is a tad confusing. In the Nutrafin kit the KH is basically 2 drops per 1º of Carbonate Hardness while the GH is basically 1 drop per 1º of General Hardness.

the test kits im using are both API gh + kh and the freshwater master test kit
so both my gh +kh results would be 143.2 ?  (8x17,9?)


so with the above results does that mean the rocks i added to the tank have helped increase the hardness ?

@Sue also would it be ok if i posted here and edited daily my log for the cycle so myself and you could check to see if i'm messing up anywhere?