My First Tank

[Mr_Chimp]

Hi, i just started my first tank's cycle ive done a bit of research and think ive got all the bases covered but not totally sure.

ive got a filter, heater and light tho some say a heater isnt needed but i will have dwarf suckers in there aswell so ive put the heater in. Is a heater needed for cycling?

Ive dechlorinated the water and added some bottled bacteria and added breadcrumbs as my friend said it helps as the bacteria has something to breakdown, is this correct?

Will be adding plants as soon as they come in the post, is it right to wash in warm salty water? plus is it ok to put plants into only gravel?

Got ph, ammonia and nitrite testing kits coming in the post aswell, is there any others that might be useful?

Will do 2 water changes this week then 1 every week after that, and i guess the testing kits will tell me when to get my shrimp.

Is it wise to buy a quarantine tank just incase of infection?

cheers Adam

[Carlo]

Hey Adam, welcome to the hobby. Sounds like you have everything you need to successfully keep shrimp. I would not add bread crumbs, or any food for that matter. I have successfully started 4 tanks from scratch using Amano shrimp. Ghost shrimp would be fine too and they are cheaper. Before anything, wait a couple of weeks with just the filter and heater running. Your water may be cloudy for a short time, but will turn clear overnight. At this point, I would introduce my starter shrimp. Partial water changes are not necessary to be done more than once a week, or it may slow down the cycling process.

Hope this helped.

Carlo

[7Enigma]

Hi Adam,

I'd recommend disregarding the previous post as it contains quite a bit of bad information, will take much longer than a proper fishless-cycle method; not to mention is ethically questionable as you are basically poisoning "starter" animals for the sake of cycling a tank. Here is a link to an article I wrote a couple years ago that talks about fishless cycling (what you are attempting to do). The principles are the same for fish and invertebrates so you're good to go. If you have specific questions after reading feel free to leave a comment here and I'll answer them.

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/articles/ ... Page1.html



HTH