Idiot guide on cycling my tank please

Hello can someone help I need a step by step idiot guide on cycling my tank for a red spotted newt (I don’t have a clue) thought it was just treating the water, pet shop said I just had to use tap safe.

My newt is in the tank but not the water he don't go in i think because of the water not being cycle.

i posted thread in wrong forum so i'm trying again
http://www.caudata.org/forum/f46-be...ers-substrate/68627-help-cycling-my-tank.html

There are many ways to do it. I personally add some foods to the tank, then let it decay. The decomposed matters will become ammonia which is poisonous. Then your tank will eventual develop bacteria that convert the ammonia to Nitrite. Which is still poisonous to your newt in a lesser degree. Now, wait for sometime for other bacteria to establish to convert Nitrite to Nitrate. In Nitrate form, the water is less poisonous to newt and your regular water change will keep it density in check.

What size of a tank are you keeping your eastern newt? It will take time for the water to become cycled. If you like, you may buy some chemical from aquarium store that neutralize the ammonia but slow down your cycling.

The reason your newt stay on land might because it is stressed. Had it tried to venture into water? Do you have your tank escape-proof? In situation like this, Newt will likely attempt to escape.

What I would do....
1) move your newt to a smaller container with dechlorinated water, put it at a dark, sheltered and cold place. This will help the newt to become less stressed. Also allow you to change 100% water change easily. Maybe a rock for the newt to seat on out of water as well. Keep a bucket of dechlorinated water, and let it seat at room temperature. Use this water for the 100% daily water change. You don't want to keep your newt in the tank you are trying to cycle. As the water can become harmful to the newt.
2) Fill your tank up with dechlorinated water to the desired depth, chlorinated water will kill the nitrogen cycle bacteria, which you dont want. Make sure you have some substrate so that bacteria might develop on.
3) Air pump to the water will help bacteria develop faster. A corner air pump filter will be very useful.
4) add some food to the tank and let it decay.
5) Wait for a few weeks.
6) test the water with a water test kit. it should read that Ammonia near Zero, Nitrite near Zero and Nitrate is high.
7) Change the water (conditioned water) so that Nitrate level is lowered. Maybe a 50% water change or less.
8) Reintroduce your newt to the tank.

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Correct me if I am wrong. Or feel free to suggest alternatives.

thank you,
The tank is 23½” x 12” x 16"high and 5” of water.
Would I need to put him in a different tank even if he don’t go in the water its just I don’t have anything that he wouldn’t be able to get out off. I could give him a fresh dish of dechlorinated water each day, would that be ok?
What is the best food to add to the water? I have bloodworm, daphnia (frozen) and pellets.

I guess might be a water dish with clean water can help, if you can't arrange a temporary setup for it. Don't know if you can provide a shelter/shade so that it can be less stressful.

Anything that decay the fastest might work. For example, frozen daphnia might help. Your local aquarium/pet store should have something that help you add bacteria to the water to encourage cycling. A test kit might help as well for you to monitor the stages of cycling.

btw, is your newt eating? or rejecting food? Is it just rejecting water? Maybe it is just stressed from the petstore condition or the disturbance in the water. Otherwise, if your water has no ammonia and nitrite, it should be willing to go into the water. Unless it is a young eastern newt that is not too aquatic yet, regardless if it is green or not.

i would just like to add that if you add something from an already cycled tank it will speed up the time to cycle, you could try and get some gravel from a local pet stores tank or if you know somebody with a cycled tank you could borrow a piece of decoration from their tank.

and to cycle with food i would strongly recomend that the food be placed in a nylon sack or a sock, this way the tank will remain cleaner and it makes the whole process more nice to look at (opposed to a tank that is litered with clumps of fotting daphnia/bloodworm/etc).

cycling will take quite some time and without the proper test kits you may never be too sure whether or not a tank has cycled, i had a friend once who had to wait 3 or 4 months for his tank to cycle.

i almost forgot, if you really need to hurry up the cycling process you could always buy some bottled starts, it will almost always speed up the cycling process but in the long run it has a lot risks of crashing, live plants always help when you need to finish the cycle (they eat up the nitrates and keep the tank pretty stable once it is done.

Thank you all for your help,
he is eating just not a great amount and he has never spent time in the water I think he is still young. He has some shelter and I have a good test kit I will test every couple of days.

The sock idea is great thank you.

Hi i've been at this for weeks now the Ammonia level is about 0.25
Nitrite 1
Nitrate 50
General hardness 16
Carbonate hardness 6
PH 7.2
Chlorine 0.8
is the cycling nearly finnished?
What should I be doing now?

Ammonia and nitrite need to be at 0.

Once you dose with ammonia and it can be brought down to 0ppm within 12 hours then you are ready to fill your tank.

My tank has been cycling 30 days and I don't have my first drop in ammonia yet

- ammonia first drops to 0, you add more ammonia so that the nitrate can grow - apparently it takes twice as the first step; once the nitrates have grown the nitrite will drop to 0; when you can put ammonia in (about 4ppm) and it goes to 0ppm within 12 hours then you are ready

A couple of thoughts I'd like to throw in in case they'll help:

1) are you sure you read the nitrates correctly? 50ppm would be very unhealthy and unusual for a new tank. It also would be unlikely to have any ammonia or NO2 if the NO3 is that high.

2.)If your newt is living in the tank already, you should not have to worry about adding ammonia. Your newt (and whatever he's eating) is already adding ammonia for you.

3.) since the newt is in the tank, and you have ammonia readings, I would keep up with daily changes of 25% of the water in the tank (with dechlorinated water) until your tank is cycled. (Ammonia and nitrites will be hard on the newt.)

4.) There's a lot of debate about products that are meant to cycle tanks, and there are some opinions that they slow the cycling process down, if the type of good bacteria isn't the same type of bacteria that your tank has already begun to cultivate. The hilight reel of this debate: I've generally heard that, if one is going to use a bottled product to help the cycle, Tetra Safe Start is the preferred one. I'm not entirely sure how accurate that all is, but the complaint that cycling with such a product is prevalent, so I think there's some truth to it. (Personally, I would not spend the money. I would keep up with daily partial water changes and wait it out.)

5.) I think this came up, but it's worth mentioning again: If you know someone with a fishtank who can donate a damp, used filter cartridge, or if your petstore will donate used (don't let it dry out) filter media, it will speed up your cycle immensely. Filter material that's been in an established tank a while has loads of beneficial bacteria.

You're getting there, so don't lose hope.

Keep us posted, and keep the questions coming as they arise.

Hi just checked levels again now the Ammonia is 0.25
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 25

Should I have an ammonia source in the tank?
my newt is not in there yet but hopefuly soon,

I know that picture is out of date, but your newt does not look ready to go in the water yet. He still looks like an eft to me.

With nitrates at 25, there really shouldn't be any ammonia readings. Possible causes for the continued presence of ammonia:

>faulty test kit
>overfeeding
>ammonia could be in the tap water that you're using to do water changes.

I would test the tap water for ammonia, and make sure that you're not feeding more than the newt eats in about ten minutes.

*Are you using test strips, or liquid drop kits to test ammonia? I have heard that the testing strips are often inaccurate.

No I am using a liquid drop test kits and my newt is not in the tank but up to today there was an ammonia source (bloodworms)