New Aquarium cannot keep beginner fish alive

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 5/28/2022 at 8:42 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

Cool, there IS some ceramic in there, but not much.  You can very likely fit more.

Essentially when you're modifying a filter there's a few choices.  All of them are centered around how does the filter operate and how do you take advantage of the flow path itself.  One of the easiest ways to mod a filter is to just fill it with sponge.  Based on the top down view it looks like....

Blue = Flow in, there should be a small inlet here when you look inside.
Red = Flow out,  Right now the ceramic media bag would be on this red side of your cartridge.
Green = sponge = mod



Essentially you'd just have to measure the length, cut it to fit, then you're good to go.  If you wanted to have sponge and ceramic, you'd just leave a gap on the red side and then you would slot the media in there.

If you have a filter that flows bottom ---> top and not only left to right you could do something like this as well.

GREAT explanation! *clap clap clap*

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 5/28/2022 at 3:22 PM, JoeQ said:

from the sheer amount of bubbles on the surface I would think something ammonia or med related was going on.

@JoeQ does that mean there is a film or something on top of the water preventing the bubbles from popping?

[nabokovfan87]

On 5/31/2022 at 10:32 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

does that mean there is a film or something on top of the water preventing the bubbles from popping?

I believe it has to do with surface tension. The density of the water changes and the bubbles have an easier time sticking around.
 

This is a very cool stream and helps a lot to break down a lot of different issues someone might encounter.

 

[JoeQ]

On 5/31/2022 at 1:32 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

@JoeQ does that mean there is a film or something on top of the water preventing the bubbles from popping?

Im not sure on the exact mechanics, all i know is that small bubbles resting at the surface needs attention ASAP. Nabokovfan offered some pretty good youtu.be links above. 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

@nabokovfan87 Thanks for sharing those!  Very interesting!  

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

You already have a good source of beneficial bacteria in hand with your cycled 5 gallon - I would harvest the "juice" from the filter from the 5 gallon, and with every water change I would add some - squeeze the media and empty the water and the mulm from the filter into a container and add after water change and addition of dechlorinator - I would give it about 10 minutes between the dechlorinated water and the circulation of the filter in the 20 g before adding the "juice." 

You are really close. Good luck!

[Wrencher_Scott]

Whoever sold you that WORTHLESS filter should be sent to Russia.

Fill it with foam. It sucks because your cycle will be disrupted but it is what it is. try to leave those ceramic stuff in there with the foam for a few weeks, it will help the cycle. 

If you have ANY nitrite it is not cycled or can't keep up with the load of the fish. You mut have zero ammonia and nitrite for the fish.

Cycling takes much longer than 2 weeks. 

This is what I would do:

Fill the filter with course foam (like Cory's video above, very important),

Then get some old filter gunk from the local fish store. Put it in the filter foam.

OR, Some stores will sell you an old dirty sponge filter, use it with your air pump. Only lightly rinse it in declored or tank water, IF it's horribly dirty, don't "clean" it. This will give you a cycled filter to run along with your hang on back FILLED WITH COURSE FOAM. after a month or so the hand on back will be ready, you can remove the sponge if you want but running both is always better. 

Then in a few days test to see what's up. 

Another plus besides the awesome filter ability by running only foam is you never have to buy their over priced filter crap again. Just lightly rinse the foam in tank water when it plugs up, simple!