Blog It Out Your Pie Hole

So all the fish we’ve purchased have died. The goldfish got Ick, and nobody knew what it was until it was too late. The Zebra Danios we got were probably diseased when we got them. There’s a 15 day guarantee, but only on established tanks. Tank’s not estabished, no guarantee. So we’ll cycle the tank fishlessly.

Decided to do it fishlessly for 2 reasons.

1. It will give the LFS time to get non-diseased fish, or to kill off the disease ridden fish; and
2. I want my fish to live longer. Putting them in such a stressful situation will greatly shorten their life expectancy.

To get started, I had to find some clear, non-sudsing Ammonia. I went to Safeway, Long’s, Walgreen’s, and Drug Emporium. Looked at the cheapest ammonia available. All they had was either sudsing or lemon scented. I finally found some at Albertson’s. I dropped in 1 tbsp of ammonia in a 10 gallon tank, and the reading went off the chart. The chart only goes up to 8ppm of ammonia, a fatal dose for fish, but still, it went off the chart. 1 Tablespoon is 3 teaspoons, so I guess “a couple of teaspoons for a small tank around 40 liters (10G)” would be 1 or 1-1/2 teaspoons. An optimal reading is 3-5ppm. I guess it’ll recover.

Good thing it’s called “Fishless Cycling.”