[johnpeezy]

okay I'm new to this whole fish tank thing my girlfriend wanted a fish and couldn't keep a tank at her home so now i have one.

This will describe exactly how new i am to this whole fish process.....
The day after the tank was filled with water and i thought it was "set up" and ready to go, I made a B-line to my LFS bought a plant some treatment suff and a puffer fish from my local walmart store (best purchase i made that day, I'll explain) Aclimated hte puffer the the tank and had it all ready to go the next day for my grild friend.

To follow up my kill first ask questions later mentality I was using when I was making my future investment. I began to research on the puffer fish I had just purchased. To my dismay he apparently does not eat flake food, secrets a type of venom through his skin or something has teeth and eat the fins off of all other fish in the tank.....did i mention he needed to be kept alone in a 30+ gallon tank as opposed to the 14 gallon we have? So as I'm sitting in front of my computer making a feeble attempt to try and devise a way to explain to my girlfriend why SHE can't put any fish in HER tank because of MY fish, I ran across a section on the puffer forums about cycling and i was like what the hell is this?

Then I came to the realization of how big of a mistake I have made. I could deal with the whole girlfriend thing but I have place Francis's(thats my puffer) life in JEPORDAY!! Apparently its a big nono to cycle a tank with a puffer fish, however if i were to return him to Walmart he would meet the toilet. Well the next day I call my LFS and explained to them my situation donated francis and hes still buzzing around there Brackish tank happy as all hell ( and I refuse to let them sell him).

So after stupid mistake #1 I was on to stupid mistake #2... more fish I read a post again on the internet of people using dianos and barbs to cycle there tanks, so i bought some, 2 of each and that eaquls four fish in my tank and an MOUND of work on mypart. After about a week of constant reading, water changing, and testing my tank isn't really calming down quite yet. Its ammonia levels will hit about .5 ppm every other day and doing a 2 gallon water change will settle it down below .25 ppm so thats what i have been doing bards and dainos seem fine and happy ( minus one, LFS told me i was chaning my water too much one got dropsey and met her demise that day ammonia level hit some where between 1 and 2). I'm definitley keeping my water changing regiment since it seems to be working pretty good except the time i listned to the LFS... Anyway I was wondering,

Do you think I should use straight Tap water to treat and stick in my tank or my PUR filtered tap water? I have one of those faucet filters on my sink, does anyone have experience with one of these things? thanks everyone