Contrary to popular belief, goldfish do not belong in fishbowls!

Well, my tank's been up and running for 10 days now. I don't know how, but my ammonia remained very low, never reaching above the 0.25 mark! Great news for little Vinnie no doubt. At first i thought my tank is never going to cycle because aren't you suppose to see ammonia levels rising, which mine wasn't doing at all. Then, to my surprise, i tested the water again yesterday, using my API Mater Test Kit (awesome!) that i bought at this shop in Hillfox - Animal Kingdom. The results were as follows:
Ammonia = 0
Nitrite = 0.25
PH = 7.8
Nitrate = 0
Notice the nitrite now rising and the ammonia zero - this means my tank is CYCLING heeehaaa . Don't know how i missed the ammonia spike or why, don't care either! :)

Gonna do a water change this weekend, for the first time, and then salt the tank for nitrite poisoning.

Test Kits

Whatever you do, don't buy test STRIPS. Useless! I paid a fortune for it and its not even accurate grrrr... Off tomorrow to get the drop test kits. Found a great link that allows you to keep an update of your water parameters, especially when cycling your tank. "It has alerts if your readings are toxic or dangerous and also has an overall comparison graph in addition to individual graphs for each of the tests, which could be useful for identifying trends. It updates automatically each time you enter data." Check it out at the bottom of my page under my Links tab. Oh, and here's a pic of my new tank..

You can actually see little Vinnie (Fantail Goldie) in the bottom right-hand corner.

This is the built-in filter.

If you're in the Johannesburg area, visit the Kenilworth Aquarium Centre. Mel phoned me on Thursday to let me know my fish tank is ready for collection. It took them 2 days to build! Tanks come with a 2 year guarantee + instructions. The service is excellent and well worth a visit.

The R.O. Water debate

Wasn't sure whether to go for tap water (which contains 0.1mm of nitrites - due to city water no doubt) or Reverse Osmosis water. Turns out i can use the tap water as long as i leave it out for 24hrs, use a water conditioner that gets rid of the nitrites, and perhaps salt it. Phew! having to carry all those bags of water from the car to the flat was not going to be pretty! If i go with RO, i will have to add minerals to the RO water as it has no minerals in it that the fish actually need! So, RO is great for drinking but not great for fishies, while tap water is good for fishies but not good for drinking .

Fish tank on order

Tank size: 915 x 325 x 600 mm