What Fish To Get?

Guppies have a terrible reputation these days for just dying for no apparent reason. If all the other fish in the tank are OK, I usually put it down to yet another batch of iffy guppies.

I have heard reports that if you can source guppies that have been locally bred, they are much hardier than those you buy in shops. The best place to keep an eye out for locally bred is the website aquarist-classifieds.

For the first time it doesn't matter. You will need to add enough dechlorinator to treat all the water so it doesn't matter when or where you add it so long as you do.

When you do water changes later, either add enough dechlorinator to the bucket of new water at the right dose for just the amount new water, or add it to the tank at the dose for the whole volume of the tank. The reason for this is, if you add it to the bucket and treat each bucketful as you go, then the water in the bucket is pure tapwater (if there is such a thing  ) so the dechlorinatpr just has to remove the chlorine from that bucketful. But in a tank which has fish and plants in, there will be things secreted by the fish/plants calles dissolved organic compounds (DOCs for short) and these DOCs also react with dechlorinator. If you add just the amount for the new water straight to the tank, some will react with the DOCs and there won't be enough left to remove all the chlorine in the new water. The same applies if you have a big tank and use several buckets of water to do a water change, and add all the dechlorinator to the one bucket.
With an Edge, one bucketful should be more than enough, so once you have fish, add dechlorinator to the bucket. If you ever get a tank so big you have to refill it with a hosepipe, that's when you'd need to add it straight to the tank.

My API test kit has arrived - yay! I tested my ammonia as advised by Sue as I haven't heard back for the company... the test kit is quite hard to use based on the colours! Though it looked to be between 4ppm and 8ppm on the colour guide, edging more towards the 4ppm colour so I added 1.2ml of ammonia to my tank and I'm leaving it to mix a bit before I test again. I set the tank up yesterday and added the 'cycle' starter though I doubt it'll do much, they don't give you very much of it either!

I think I'll start a new thread for all my readings etc! Exciting!

I was using day light and it's still tricky to tell I guess you get used to it eventually! What should I be testing my tapwater for to get start? Ph and nitrate?

My ammonia test is still confusing me... I tested my tank water with the added ammonia and it seems like it's only up to 2ppm... I'm still not even sure of that though, the colours are a little tricky to differentiate between

The picture's even more unhelpful than the real thing I realise ha! I guess whatever the reading is I need to add more ammonia still as it doesn't look to be up to 5ppm yet... though my kit colours only go from 4ppm to 8ppm which doesn't help much!

Ahh oki I'll do that all now then, gives me a chance to practice with the tests too I guess! I ended up buying the little pre-filter for my tank in the end after reading around on the internet... seemed a lot of people's shrimps were being sucked up by it! I also bought a replacement pack of extra noodles and filters to put in instead of the carbon, I think the noodles are a better size though so I guess I can keep the sponge until mine needs replacing eventually!

Yeah I'm still hoping to get some fish and shrimps =) Yeah I think that sounds like a good idea to me - definitely don't want any dead shrimps!

Unfortunately my siphon still hasn't arrived yet which is annoying - I need to do some rearranging in my tank! I still need to get my bogwood with java fern and moss balls, though I'm not sure when's best to add those. In good news my water is really clear so I must have got rid of all the tanins from the small pieces of bogwood and cleaned the gravel well enough! Really stupidly though I was testing out my new algae magnet to move all of the bubbles under my glass out into the little space in the edge, and managed to get the whole thing tangled inside the tank on the plants and bogwood with the retrieval string... but my tank is too full for me to sort out! I'm not sure how you're supposed to not get it tangled really!

Ahh I'm glad I can just dose to 4ppm that should be a lot easier =) I'll add some more ammonia now and start testing. Think I'll make a new thread for all the readings etc too! 

Ooh thank you Sue! You have tips for everything! Yeah I think I might just ditch the string at some point if I don't have a more successful attempt next time!

I just tested my Ph with the normal Ph range and it read at 7.6 I think, so I tested again with the high Ph but I can't tell if it's 7.4 or 8 as they're quite similar colours! It's definitely not 7.8 though as it's more of a browny colour

Ooh that is good to know! Hopefully that means it won't take tooo long then! I just tested my tank's ammonia again and it's looking good - at least 4ppm 

Nitrite is 0ppm as expected. My ammonia tap water reading is 0ppm from what I can tell... now the nitrate one has got me confused! 5ppm, 10ppm and 20ppm all look very similar...  it looks like one of those, possibly a lower value but I'm a little confused. It's gone dark now which doesn't help so maybe I should re-test in the morning!

Ha yeah felt like my arm was going to drop off following the instructions! Ahh that's good then, at least it isn't too high! I look like I'm setting up a chemistry experiment with all my bottles, test tubes and ammonia ha. Now just got to wait for something to happen!

That's what I thought too :-) Hopefully my tank won't take forever to cycle and put people off ha!

Ha I'm not the most patient person in the world, but when it comes down to pets and animals I absolutely love them so I'd never want to risk any problems that could be avoided earlier on!

Thanks for your concern Natalia - but the plants are actually fake plastic ones! I'm really glad they don't look it though! Ha :-) Even the fake ones actually turned out to be a little big than they'd ideally be as the leaves go a little bit too high, but I was desperate to get some fake plants to make the tank a little more interesting to look at whilst it's fishless and they were the nicest ones I'd seen!

In terms of actual plants - I'm planning to eventually get a largeish (for the tank size) bit of bogwood with java fern and a moss ball as discussed earlier... thinking about the tank layout etc how would you suggest I set these up? I know it's a bit vague! I stuck all the plastic plants at the back just because of how large they were so they weren't completely blocking the whole tank, but I'm open to moving them! The only problem I found was that because they have quite large bases / weights the gravel needs to be quite high to cover them up else it's a little ugly. That's another issue I had with the gravel.... I graduated it as I'd seen that on most guides to setting up an aquarium, but since the edge has '360' views the gravel looks a little silly now I think about it looking from the sides. I think I'll flatten it out, but it would need to be thicker wherever the fake plants are to cover the base. Hmm... I wish I'd moved things around a bit before I put the water in, but I didn't really notice until now! I only have some basic gravel and nothing else... would that be OK for those kinds of plants and is there anything I need to be aware of to look after them?