New crew for the 180

Well, I've started stocking.

The setting is...
3 terracotta pots
3 pieces of driftwood, w/ more possibly coming (each representing cross-continental driftwood chunks)
Silk-leaved plant on a long plastic chain purchased at a craft store
Playsand substrate

The stage management:

The biggest aquaclear
The Wal-mart Emperor stripped for mechnical filtration only
The XP4
2 250 watt heaters

And finally, the players:
2 oscars, a red and a common variety
2 blood parrots
1 firemouth
1 EBJD
3 severums (2 turq and 1 green)
1 5 inch war veteran Raph cat

A quick word on the blood parrots:

I actually bought these fish from Wal-mart, thinking they had mislabeled the species and had stocked a rare breed of severums. Juvie blood parrots look A LOT like baby severums. Dark body, striped, nice plump shape, very little deformity, FAST swimmers... all I knew about blood parrots and even the juveniles is they look like ugly red devils or midas cichlids, once they've been through the car wash a few times too many. I actually thought I had some nice severums for a couple weeks until the big one started to pinken up and I knew they were properly labeled.

So word to the wise: baby blood parrots, though they look really cool and natural, will get ugly and mutated in short order.

For a while I thought about putting them with the ray so he could eat them, but in the end their personalities won out on me and I actually enjoy the behavior of these hybrid fish (a midas or red devil and severum!) but do not plan on getting any more.

Recently I put in a plastic craft plan... silk leaves glued to a plastic chain... and it looks great. As these fish will go to town on plants, I said what the hell, let them pull on a plant that's not rooted to anything.

My plan is to cram the tank with these baby fish and monitor them as they grow. Once the oscars are medium size I will lose the more aggressive fish. Same with the severum, most likely. And we'll let the firemouths settle any problems they may have... internally.

I never knew how cool raphael catfish are. I stumbled on a near full grown specimen that I snatched up the other day. The armor on a big raph cat is pretty wild... spines, tough skin... definitely not a fish you'd want to handle unless you had it secured so you wouldn't get cut.

- J

Baby James

Well, I've gone way off topic before, so why not do it again?

This little guy was born Sunday February 25 at 7:30 pm... here he is videoed at a week old.
Baby James

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You can imagine how crushing it was to lose the ray several days after his birth.

- Josh

One more article on fishless cycling

Here is an excellent article on fishless cycling that sums up almost everthing... note it contradicts something in the prior articles I linked about urine, but such is the hobby. I tend to believe the earlier article about urine as the author got into the hows and whys; this one just tells you not to do it without any explanation at all.

When someone tells me don't, I want to know why. Especially in this hobby which is rife with bullshit, half-truths, and misinformation.

If they can't supply a viable reason, in most cases they're perpetuating a myth. Take the old discus-angelfish scenario. I keep discus and angelfish together no problemo and have been doing so for more than a year. What many people now consider to be a myth was once truth many years ago before angelfish were uniformly captive bred and introduced the parasite of which they were carriers to discus. But the thing is people kept saying DON'T mix them, and very few knew why.

Just think if Ulysses had told his men the bag of treasure he was closely guarding was the north wind which would take them all the way back to Ithaca, instead of telling them only NOT to touch it, they would have been home a lot sooner... and some of his men would have actually lived.

- Josh

180 dormant: a crash course in fishless cycling

With the tank empty, its water parameters unstable, its nitrogen cycle haywire, fishless cycling is the only way to proceed. In fact, it's what I should have done in the beginning, but that ray wouldn't have stayed in the store forever; AND I was 90% sure the tank would cycle with all the biorings and media I shoved into its two filters. As moving media has worked in the past for me (from a heavily stocked 10 gallon to a mildly stocked 55), I figured there would be no reason it wouldn't work this time around.

Fishless cycling is essentially adding clear or pure ammonia to your tank until the ammonia reading tops at 5 ppm. Eventually, nitrite begins to rise as the ammonia eating bacteria form and convert it, and then you cut your dose of ammonia in half. Your goal is have to ammonia and nitrite disappear from your tank entirely in 8-24 hours.

When nitrates appear, and ammonia and nitrite read zero, then you're done. A large water change is then in order. As I have a mammoth-ass tank, I'll have to change 20% over two days or once in the morning and then in the evening as to not deplete all the hot water in my water heater.

Last night ammonia peaked at 5 ppm and nitrites are now at .50. Going to slack on the ammonia addition until the ammonia levels drop and nitrite rises a little more. You don't want to shock the tank with too much ammonia. Right now I've been putting in exactly two tablespoons of pure ammonia each night. Last night I added three as the ammonia was only reaching 3 ppm. The extra dose got it right up to 5.

Once it begins to lower I'll only add one Tbs per day or as needed to keep the cycle going until nitrites disappear.

I only hope nitrates top around 20-25 ppm when this is all said and done as I do not want to do a massive water change on a 180 gallon tank.

Below are some links to a few excellent articles on fishless cycling as well as new tank setup.

Fishless Cycling Data: Day-by-day anaylis of someone's fishless cycle.

New Tank Setup: an article by Ecotank about starting a brand new tank and info on fishless cycling.

Fishless Cycling: A thorough how-to on fishless cycling for the beginner.

"Fishless" Cycling: an informative and humorous piece on the process... even talks about human urine as a source for ammonia!

- Josh
joshday.com

PS -- be sure you purchase only household ammonia that's unscented, unperfumed, and contains no soap or surfactants, and states that the product is pure or clear. Shake the bottle; you want to see NO foam, which indicates soap. The ingredients should read ammonia (sometimes with or without a concentration), softened water, and possibly a chelating agent, which is fine. Chelating agents are necessary to bond the gas ammonia to the liquid that is H2O.

The Ray

I lost the ray.

At about 8 PM the evening after the last post I noticed the ray stuck in the corner, as if his reverse was no longer working. I shifted him away and saw the worst: the death curl. The ends of the disc curl upward, indicating nerve damage. Once the death curl hits death is imminent.

He lived for 24 more hours before I euthanized him in a styrofoam container with clove oil.

The reason for his death is obvious: ammonia, nitrite, and a pH crash.

Obviously I DO NOT recommend toxivec unless in severe situations, like a prolonged power outage where you lose all your bacteria and need to immediately lower ammonia levels. This product has no business being introduced into a new tank, whether it's seeded with plenty of established filter media or not.

It may come from Germany, but in the end, it's just another "Cycle."

- Josh

Caveat Emptor

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in...

The ray tank has clouded up again and ammonia levels are measuring, 8 days after I used Sera Toxivec to control the nitrite appearance. Water started to cloud two days ago and ammonia only appeared yesterday.

There are two causes that I can ascertain:

1. Overfeeding and slacking on bi-weekly and often tri-weekly 20-25% water changes.
2. Toxivec reset the nitrogen cycle back to zero, or close to it, or simply just set it back.

The good news is the ray is in the best shape he's ever been in. Highly active, exhibiting good coloration, and no sign of red gills or gasping at the surface. Another bit of good news (at least for now) is the pH has leveled out a little about 6.0, which makes ammonia much less toxic than it would be at a higher pH. An ammonia reading of 1.0 ppm at 6.2 pH would not be as bad as the same reading at an 8.1 pH, which would most likely be lethal.

The flipside of that coin is nitrite is more harmful at lower pH.

My tapwater fluctuates somewhat in pH. Right now it's at 6.6. My other freshwater tanks are all at neutral, exactly 7.0. I don't know if the ray tank is unstable in pH or if it's a side effect of toxivec.

Bottom line: I need to get some Biospira and I need to get it fast.

- Josh