Suddenly I found myself drifting back to the school science lab and that fish tank.

How effective are the tips below and should I adopt them now.

I currently have a 4 day old 96L tank with 2 plants and about 2 litres of filter squeezed water from the plant tank at lfs.

Have bought some household ammonia and added 12 drops today to help things along, test kit still a week away (bloody e-cheques)so am running blind. I also have all the filter sponges in (juwel standard).

I'm running filter 24/7 and have the heater turned to max (30'c), light runs from 7am till 10pm.


2. Keep the tank only about 50-65% full. This creates a waterfall effect as the water leaves the filter, and when the water from the filter hits the surface of the aquarium water, there is a great deal of water turbulence, exposing more water to more air more quickly, and leading to increased oxygenation, and thus, faster cycling.
not sure if this would work with juwel filter

3. Keep the aquarium light on 24 hours per day during cycling. The increased light leads to faster cycling.

4. Use as many air stones and air pumps as you have access to, which will fit in the aquarium. Keep them all running all the time. This leads to increased oxygenation, which leads to faster cycling.
Don't have any or need one but would it help to get one?

oxygenating the water more will help as the bacteria need oxygen to live too. so just as much water disturbance as possible really.

Ah cool have added the plastic elbow to filter to direct water up to the surface.

Is setup below all right though? should I add more ammonia?

I currently have a 5 day old 96L tank with 2 plants and about 2 litres of filter squeezed water from the plant tank at lfs.

Have bought some household ammonia and added 12 drops today to help things along, test kit still a week away so am running blind. I also have all the filter sponges in (juwel standard).

I'm running filter 24/7 and have the heater turned to max (30'c), light runs from 7am till 10pm.

Do yourself a favour - take the black and green sponges out They seem to slow things down, because that's the aquarium I've set up, and for 4 weeks, everything's gone at snails pace. I took the black sponge out last week and nitrite went up to 0.25. But it stayed there. Took the green sponge out yesterday and nitrite's gone up again today to approx. 0.35.

Sponges taken out this morning. Cheers for the tip :)

No problem Just glad I could help.

So I set-up my tropical tank, waited a while, bought some fish, bought some more - had a few losses but wasn't too bad - then last week bought more fish changed the water and now they are all dying - so then I decide to research on the net - ok I know stupid stupid I wasted quite alot of money as well and I am fairly sure I have New Tank Syndrome. Nobody told me about this and I have been to three different fish shops and they all just sold me fish. So I am trying to keep the fish I have alive by changing 10% of the water daily, only feeding every 2nd day, keeping the light on for 20 hours per day in the hope I can keep some fish alive and cycle my tank - then start again (slowly this time)!!! My question to you knowledgable fish folk is can I take some of my goldfish gravel to help build up the bacteria. It is recommended on alot of sites to get some gravel or filter wool and add to your tank to help build up the bacteria - but doesn't say whether you can use cold water tank gravel etc. Please help and sorry for long post.

Anything from a cycled tank will be fine, so yes, if you have a cycled goldfish tank, the gravel will help speed up the cycling process.

Not many lfs shops do advise you to cycle the tank first, and even those that do often tell you it'll only take a week, so you buy the tank, wait a week, get the fish, and wonder why they all start dying.

Then you find sites like this and learn that the lfs told you rubbish

Hi
If you have an undergravel filter in both the goldfish and tropical tank then yes you can take the gravel across and it will help. Otherwise however it will do very little good. If you can take a part of the filter media and put it in your tropical tank that would help far more.

Why are you keeping the light on 20 hours a day though? Is it because you already have live plants in there? If not get some as they will help reduce the toxin levels in between water changes. Also make sure you use a test kit so you know you are changing enough of the water each day to keep the conditions safe for the fish.

Good luck.