“Please do your coursework as defined and no unofficial experiments! And that includes you Mr P!”

Much amusement in the lab when we read it. (Later that day we blew a door off with some purloined chemicals).

Be that as it may, in my dotage, we’re concerned about ammonia and its lethal impact on fish.  Day 1 of the experiment, the aquarium is full of water and I’ve added a few drops of ammonia to feed to filter. My chemistry set is more modest than in my schoolboy days:

And lo and behold, after day 1, we’re at 1 ppm ammonia:

More than enough to kill most fishes.

From Steven Simpson Books

Nice !Otopharynx lithobates ‘Zimbawe’

Initially bought a Rena 4′ tank off of eBay but decided it was a bit too tatty and resold it. The whole endeavour cost me £10 in eBay fees but I ended up with a pump, an electronic thermometer, a few bits of tubing and a sore back. I’ve now bought a new Rena from Maidenhead Aquatics at Syon at their very discounted prices and it includes lights, filter, heater, testkit and set up chems. I may well sell on the lights, more of that later.
The tank arrived Friday 23rd February and was filled with water by the bucket on 24th February. Today I began the Fishless Cycling experiment by adding a small amount or ammonia. Tomorrow I’ll test the results and add a small amount more. So here’s an online log of will it work OK. Hope it helps.

Aims are simple: a display tank centering on the needs of Dwarf Cichlids and with lots of plants as these set ups look so nice! Such are the wonders of the web I’m able to tap into the expertise of peeps like Mark Breeze of Micromania and George Farmer on Aqaua Essential’s forum. All a bit like that Wood Allen movie when Marshall McLuhan is there in the cinema queue to actually provide on the spot advice and input! If technology keeps on progressing we’ll have Babel Fish in our ears so we can chat to our mates in the tank…

Fishless Cycling…what’s it all about? Well there’s that Feminist joke about ‘a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle’ and one that Guiness turned into a superb advert. But, I’m not talking about that here: Fishless Cycling is a way of speeding up filter maturation without harming any fish and it saves one hell of a lot of time too. It was developed by Dr Chris Cow and works on the principle of adding a small amount of ammonia to a new tank set up to ‘feed’ the filter bacteria. I’ve started an experiment using API Stress-Zyme as my bacteria source though I’d have preferred some old filter water or sponge. A mate of mine who keeps Tropheus is 3 minutes away & has exactly that, but he’s in a mardy after I upset him in a game of online Quake, but that’s another story.

Anyhow, Chris Cow’s excellent article can be found here:

Fishless Cycling

As you’ll see from my Flickr photo, I’m just using Homebase ammonia. My it stinks!

This journal records my adventures in keeping fish!

Cichlatopia