Welcome to TR Michael! i have some words of encouragement for you regarding your problems. I started in this hobby about a year ago after two complete failures. To demonstrate you are not alone, let me explain:
Failure #1: No reading, research, or advise except from my
LFS, which was a large national chain Pet something (*ahem*) who seemed more interested in selling me stuff than ensuring my success. They too said i needed a living animal in the tank to cycle it. So i added some water and salt, then a damsel, then more salt. Yea, i mixed the salt in the tank with the fish
What can i say, we all start somewhere.
Failure #2: Tried to make my own custom tank. Very bad idea.
But, then i came onto Talkingreef. I listened to Rob's podcasts at least 5 times each, read through the threads, and started reading books. Now, i have a 100 gallon tank almost set up and finished. You have come to the right place my friend.
So, advice regarding your issues.
Cycling
My first thing to say is to
not cycle a tank with a fish, or any other animal, in it. Personally i think it is cruel; like stuffing a person into a room with toxic air and hoping their lungs will filter out the bad stuff. Not only that, but that fish will be so stressed it will likely die. The simplest way i have found:
1) Mix up your water and such.
2) Get a cup of water, sand, or a piece or two of live rock from another hobbiest and add it to the water.
3) Use Rob's table shrimp method. Add a whole uncooked shrimp (i.e. human food shrimp) to the tank and let it rot.
Fish stress
A huge mistake i made in the beginning was impatience. When you get a new critter, think in weeks, not days. I used the "bag floating" method of
acclimation the first few times. I just floated the plastic bag in the tank water, added some water here and there, then dumped the fish in. I lost every fish i have ever acclimated in this way. My suggestion is to try the drip
acclimation. Grab some cheap airline tubing and create a slow siphon of about a drip per second. Add the fish to a clean bowl (or something ridged and larger than the bag) and let the water from your
QT fill the bowl. After several
hours, like 2 or 3, net the fish and quickly add it to the
QT.
Do not add the water from the store into your tank! I have introduced all sorts of diseases by doing so!
When in the
QT, give the fishie time. I am still haunted by the ghosts of the damsels, angles, and dottybacks i have killed with my impatience
I would get all excited and add the fish to the display in a few days, where it was chased, harassed, stressed, then eventually killed by the other inhabitants. Most of them would have been fine if i had left it some time to chill out first. Try leaving it in the
QT for 2 to 3 weeks or longer, at least until it starts swimming and eating normally.
One last note: I don't trust bleach. It takes so much rinsing to clean the residue off of the equipment. If you have a wine and bear making store in your area grab some no-rinse sterilizer that uses oxygen. Take a look
here. this stuff uses ozone to kill bacteria and such and leaves no harmful residues.
