Stage 3

Stage Three (Weeks 2-6)

Maturing your Aquarium
This stage calls for your patience, rush it and it can easily lose fish and with it confidence.  If you add your second batch of fish too early, you run the much higher risk of destroying all you have already achieved, by exposing your fish to the risk of disease or even death.

Water Testing

Let us help you turn your tap water into your healthy aquarium. Test a minimum of weekly and see what happens to your aquarium, it is quite amazing to see how the chemistry changes.  Remember don’t be tempted to add your second batch of fish until your Ammonia and Nitrite reads zero and you won’t go far wrong.

Ammonia / Ammonium & Nitrite

By testing at least weekly you will see both the ammonia/ammonium and the nitrites increase.  Then as the ‘friendly’ bacteria colonise in your filter they will decrease.  No two aquariums are ever exactly the same, so there is no exact time scale as to what will happen and how fast it will happen.  Interestingly 10 days is about the fastest you can mature an aquarium, but for most aquariums it normally takes around 4-6 weeks.

Overfeeding

Levels of ammonia and nitrite on average peak around the two week mark, if you are climbing to the top of the test results tables in say a few days to a week, this can be caused by giving to much food at this stage of the aquariums life.

It is not necessarily that you are over feeding the fish, more likely you are putting in more food then the aquarium can cope with.  So cut down to one small meal a day and make sure you have no uneaten food in the aquarium as this makes the problem much worse.  If you have over fed, remove any uneaten food by gently whisking the water with a fine net, you will find you can catch the food in the net quite easily and remove it.  When following this program and you will not normally need to change any water at this stage.   If you have purchased the fish we recommended and do not feed to much they will be strong enough to get you through this period.  Changing water often just slows things down as it is not possible to dilute ammonia or nitrite the only way to get lower levels is to let the friendly bacteria do this for you.

Are your pH and GH on target?

Make sure that you are on target with both the pH and GH.  If you live in a hard water area it normally takes from between one to two weeks to get this part of your aquariums chemistry correct.  In soft water areas this is less of a problem and hopefully you will get a good result quite quickly.  Amazingly though some water companies in soft water areas make the water harder to protect their piping network thus extending its life span, so some adjustment may become necessary.  Be aware also that in some areas the KH value will be very low; thus making your aquarium pH less stable.

Nitrate

As the aquarium matures you will notice an increase in the level of nitrate this is quite normal.  Nitrates are in themselves, not as toxic as ammonia and nitrite but without any doubt, the lower the result the better the fish.  Many areas in the UK have tap water with high nitrates, so water changes alone don’t necessarily improve the situation.  If you are in a situation where the nitrates are climbing high fast, then contact one of our members of staff and they will be able to advise a solution to cure the problem very quickly.

If all you water tests are ok you can add more fish

Once you are confident that you have successfully matured your aquarium and your water test results are all good, then feel free to add more fish.  You are best advised to add fish slowly increasing the quantity of food you are offering your fish up to the manufacturer’s recommendation.  If you go too far too fast you will end up with the ammonia and nitrites climbing again, so test regularly and follow the recommendations and you will experience minimal problems.