Hello From New Member

Hello everyone. I'm very new to fish keeping & have loads to learn.....
This is to be our new family hobby... Inspired by my 12 & 8 year old sons enthusiasm after recent visits to some sea life centres.
I'm intending to start off with cold water / temperate fish, we bought our first tank yesterday.  We came home with a Juwel primo 110L
aquarium. This came supplied with a Juwel Bioflow 500 filter system. We have done a little research, we intend doing a fishless cycle. From my other hobby (vintage watch repairs) I already have some Jeys kleen off household ammonia.
I'm sure someone will correct me if this is not the correct ammonia. I've not started the cycle yet. We wanted to set up the aquarium to test the equipment for 48 hours. We have filled the tank using API  tap water conditioner and have the temp set to 30 deg C. (will reduce temp when we stock with fish) We are now 24 hrs
into testing. All looking good....
I also bought some API ammonia test strips & API 5 in 1 test strips. All going well we will start the cycle tomorrow.
Any tips will be greatly appreciated.
P.S we live in North Essex. A hard water area, 370 mg/l.
Kind Regards Mel (and Boys)

If it's less than 3 ppm, you can add some more - but make a note of how much you add altogether.

If the starting ammonia level is greater than 5 mg/litre (ppm), this can inhibit some species of nitrite-oxidizing bacteria, it seems. So, it's probably wise to aim for 3 - 5 mg/litre (ppm).

JPC

Just to add a temperate fish you could consider... the variatus platy might be a good option, they are really colourful too! 

Welcome 
Sounds like you're on the right tracks with everything.
The only additional piece of advice I have would be that the test strips don't have great accuracy. In my experience, they are good for nitrate and nitrite, but you'd be better to check your PH and water hardness (in CaCO3 and German degrees hardness) from your water company website and just ignore what the test strips say for PH, KH and GH. I find the ammonia test strip very hard to read; if you also find it difficult, then it may be worth buying a liquid-based test instead.
Hope that's helpful.

Hi MDW, and welcome to the forum. 

It's great to hear that the whole family are getting involved with the wonderful world of aquatics.

I live in Cambridge, and my water is around 357ppm. I have temperate fish. Variatus platies and zebra danios were my first fish, though I only have 1 original zebra danio left now.

I agree with @Sue that using the heater in the tank will give you a longer list of fish to choose from, and doesn't take any extra work.

I found this article on hard water a while back, and it's an interesting read http://www.wetwebmedia.com/fwsubwebindex/fwhardness.htm

There are also articles on temperate fish
https://fishroom.co.uk/2016/03/19/no-heater-no-problem-your-introduction-to-temperate-fish/
I will admit to owning zebra & leopard danios, white cloud mountain minnows, rainbow shiners, peppered corydoras, hillstream loaches, and various gobies. They are in a big tank set up with strong water flow though, and I do add some RO to make the water a bit softer.

Sometimes the problem is living in a hard water area, and wanting temperate fish that are suitable for the tank. It may take a bit of research, posting lists of fish you like here on the forum, and getting feedback on suitability & compatibility.

You might also want to consider some ammano shrimp. I have some in several tanks, and they are fine with temperate or tropical tanks. They are also quite perky, active, and help keep the tank tidy. I also feel that the white cloud mountain minnows are easy to overlook in a shop, but their colours & markings are quite lovely when they are settled.

Are there any fish that you particularly like?

More questions from me. Apologies in advance because I'm on hold with my extra fish plans due to starting a new job, so being able to watch someone set up a new tank from the sidelines is almost as exciting as getting a new tank myself. Especially with your hard water situation. 

What do you want your tank to look like?
What do you have in it at the moment? Substrate, decor, etc. Do you want fish throughout the tank? Mid-water swimmers and fish or something at the bottom? How do you feel about shrimp & snails? What are you thinking about plants & decor? Have you considered live plants? They're not as tricky as you may think, and @Matt is a very keen aquascaper who has helped me to design my tanks with low maintenance plants that don't require anything extra (such as CO2, excessive maintenance).

I admit that I am still relatively new to fish, as I started in 2015. The reason I'm asking about plants & decor is because I started with gravel & plastic plants, fairly quickly moving on to sand & silk plants, then within around 12 months, moved on to planting substrate/root tabs covered by sand with live plants. I ended up spending a lot of money on things that I ended up getting rid of quite quickly. With this in mind I urge you to consider what you want the tank to look like before spending too much. Have a look at Matt's site  http://scapeeasy.co.uk/  for some inspiration on plants. His designs are stunning, and you can also use the same theories to set up a more simple tank for your fish. My temperate river tank is all plants tied to decor (anubias and bucephalandra), so not even planted. Considering the substrate & decor may be important if you want something to live at the bottom of your tank. Often sand is more suitable than gravel, and you can site other decor in the sand. If you want a natural looking tank, wood & pebbles/rocks are popular. If the boys want something else, sunken ships, skull caves, bubbling treasure chests, etc. can also be sited in the sand.

Those of us who have changed our tanks more than once probably have several boxes of previously used tank decor stored somewhere around the home. If we can help you to avoid the same situation that would be a bonus. 

Hi Littlefish. Currently we do not have much in the tank other than marina gravel, some plastic plants and a piece of rock. Regarding plants, I had given some thought to this. My initial plan was to have some floating plants and to plant onto the stone and onto some bog wood (this is currently soaking to get rid of some tanning) I get your point regards buying plastic bits then upgrading. Now I've looked at Matt's sight I may well rethink things. (Great site, thanks Matt!! )
I would like fish throughout the tank. Snails and shrimp have been ruled out.  For bottom feeders we looked at Zebra and Dwarf Chain Loaches. Have you any thoughts on these? Or any other bottom feeders for that matter. (We were not keen on Pleco's)
The boys would fill the bottom with all sorts of deco if they had their way. 
Nearly came home with a millennium falcon on our first visit to the fish shop. Thankfully they did not get the better of me. We got rock instead. 
We are off to our local fish shop in the morning (not buying) Just looking!!

P.S regards our cycle, we started this on the 28th Aug. This may sound a silly question... But,
What date would day 3 be? I wasn't sure if day 1 was the day the first ammonia went in or is day 1, 24 hours after the ammonia went in?
Thanks ALL!
Regards Mel

The problem is your hard water. Loaches and cories are all soft water as are the pencilfish that Matt mentioned.

There are two options, the first being the easiest for a beginner.
#1 Choose fish which have your hardness near the middle of the preferred range for any species
#2 Use pure water to dilute the hardness minerals. By pure water I mean reverse osmosis (RO, water that has had all dissolved stuff removed by passing it through a membrane) or distilled water or even rainwater if you can be sure it is free from contamination. The downside with this is that you must have enough pure water on hand at all times in case you ever need to do an emergency water change.



Besides livebearers, there are fish of the Pseudomugil genus, which unfortunately are not included in the database on here or in the article that Littlefish gave you the link for. They are well suited to tanks the size of yours (which is 81 cm long, 35 cm cm front to back and 45 cm tall)

This link https://forums.thinkfish.co.uk/new-fishkeepers/list-of-fish-suitable-for-high-ph-and-hard-water/ might also be helpful too, to work out suitable possibilities. 

Wow! So much help and advise. I am truly grateful for all the replys here. Thanks to everyone for all the time and effort you have put in to help me out.
Thanks Again!!