when can I start adding shrimps?

[sea-horsea]

ok water change skipped....I do have 3 white cloud minnows and 1 danio from my old 5 gal. tank....I sucked all the water out from the 5 gal. tank as much as possible with the junk on the bottom.....

I added some plants in there tonight...I will try to take some pictures after I find my camera...its there somewhere...

oh I also got a 15w, 6500K, CF for the tank.....I calculated the tank is about 8.5 to 9 gal...with the substrate maybe just 7 or so..and 9 inches from the light to the substrate....

[Sponsors]

[lauraleellbp]

Ok back up- there ARE fish in this tank?

Are they in the new tank or the old? If they're in the new one, you need to PWC like nobody's business- you need to keep the ammonia and nitrItes down below 0.25ppm otherwise your fish are in a torture box!

[LGHT]

Yeah I didn't realize you had fish in the tank. If you do, you need to do water changes if not they will probably die from the amonia. I usually just get a few goldfish that are very harty when trying to cycle a tank and I have time to spare. If I don't have time it's all about the bio-spira to speed up the cycle.

[phanizzle]

Is it true that you can't OD on bio spira. Being the packet for 30gal or 90gal? I read this somewhere, that there isn't a certain amount you can add and there is no OD-ing with bio spira.

[sea-horsea]

ok I went to a friend's house tonight with a 5 gal. bucket which I used for buying salt water from the lfs....the friend has a 120 gal. discus tank which he has for more than 3 years...he promised me the water is 100% safe because he never used any chemicals since day one....I was wondering if this water that he has will help me with my tank.

[lauraleellbp]

IMO tank water won't help (not measurably, anyways) see if he'll vacuum the tank and give you the mulm and/or maybe give you some used filter media?

There are some things you can do to make this go a little more quickly, but no matter what time and patience will be your best friends here...

[sea-horsea]

I did suck the junk out of the bottom for the 5 gal. water i got :P

[LGHT]

Originally Posted by phanizzle

Is it true that you can't OD on bio spira. Being the packet for 30gal or 90gal? I read this somewhere, that there isn't a certain amount you can add and there is no OD-ing with bio spira.

Well first of all you need to understand with Bio Spira is. It's basically a bag of beneficial bacteria. The bacteria is what's already in a cycled tank and allows the ammonia conversion process to take place. Since it's the good bacteria technically you can't add too much. However the stuff isn't cheap so spending $50 on bio-spira wont' be better than getting the $18.00 bag especially if it's a small tank. Since it is somewhat expensive you can get the same bacteria from an already established tank. Simply get some media (filter sponge, dirty filter media, bio media, rocks, substrate mulm, plants etc.) from an already tank. A cycled sponge or used bio media is by far the best because they are designed to hold colonized bacteria. Where the other items are not, but will still have some bacteria on them. So the best thing you can do is get a Bio wheel from a cycled tank, a Sponge from a cycled tank.