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Thread: enlighten me please

  1. #1
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    enlighten me please

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    hi all

    recently been reading up about what is going on in a fish tank. i hear people talking about CO2, night time the plant consume O2?

    My questions are:

    1) Cycling is creating some good bacteria in the tank right? or in the filter? basically jus leave it there for a few days?

    2) When the tank is dirty, its nitrite inside cause of the wasted food and poo right? going through the filter will become nitrate which is less harmful right? which is ammonia acid too?

    3) What is the different between biological filter and aquarium filter?

  2. #2
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    Re: enlighten me please

    Beneficial bacteria, lets call it BB, help to convert ammonia to nitrites, and nitrites to nitrates, which are less toxic than the previous one. Fish produced ammonia in their pee, and rather than converting it to something else like most land animals do, they simply excrete it out. Ammonia is toxic to fishes. Anything that decomposes would also create ammonia, be it fish poo, uneaten food etc. Cycling a tank would allow a tank to grow these BB, so that you can convert the ammonia to the less toxic nitrate. There's a lot of technical jargon here and there but I won't be elaborating. BB attaches to surfaces. So any surface in the tank will be able to support BB. Be it gravel, the tank walls, filter media etc. Every surface has BB on it in an aquarium. To cycle a tank, you need a source of ammonia, and for the filter to be running, etc etc. Basically more or less the same thing as when you're running the tank. The more mainstream method now would be fishless cycling, or the using of fish food/other things that decompose.
    You need an ammonia test kit and nitrite test kit to know whether your cycle is complete. You'll see a spike in ammonia, then a spike in nitrite, then both should reach zero. THIS IS IMPORTANT.
    You can speed up that cycling process by adding some filter media from an old filter that is in use. That's called seeding. Still, this takes about 2-3 weeks, not a few days.
    An aquarium filter is a piece of equipment that is used for several purposes. A biological filter is a filter that is used to provide extra surface area for the BB to grow on.

  3. #3
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    Re: enlighten me please

    Might be good to let us know what kinda tank you're planning to run, plants? live stock? We'll point you in the right direction. Most people here start a journal when they setup the new tank.

  4. #4
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    Re: enlighten me please

    here's a good read for you.
    http://www.fishlore.com/NitrogenCycle.htm

  5. #5
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    Re: enlighten me please

    If you do not want to invest on test kit, just cycle your tank for a month, that should give enough time for BB to build colony
    -Robert
    Aquascaping is a marriage between Art and Farming
    My Blog: http://aquatic-art.blogspot.com/

  6. #6
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    Re: enlighten me please

    Oops I meant to say if you wanted to take the shortcut, you need a test kit to be sure. But like bro Shadow said, you can just wait a month. By then should be ok.

  7. #7
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    Re: enlighten me please

    ahh its good info guys. thanks

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