Cycling?

[Flashygrrl]

I'm not really sure what anyone's told you, but you don't do full tank changes when you have a cycled tank. You might do up to about 70% (when it's fully cycled), but never 100%. If you have a weird tank smell you need to test and do an appropriate water change, however to change out all the water would start you from scratch or at least close to it (some bacteria would remain in the gravel but not really enough).

[tmz]

oh. so rinsing out gravel is a bad idea then.
yeah i really know close to nothing about this...

[Flashygrrl]

LOL, yeah, no gravel rinsing. Vacuuming part of the gravel during your change once a week is ok though :)

And it's ok that your still learning, just do your reading up on the process. Learning about the nitrogen cycle is actually very helpful for more than fishkeeping.

[tmz]

how do you vaccum the gravel?


i'm relatively new to aquarium keeping. my parents had one when i was little, but i didn't really take care of them or anything. i hope to one day have a couple big aquariums, one saltwater and one freshwater. so i figured having one small fish in a little tank was a good place to start.