[Tanks Master]

girlfriend wanted a fish and couldn't keep a tank at her home so now i have one.
This was nice of you to do.
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.
Define Treatment "stuff" as a side note, Wal-farts fish tend to do poorly, while you may find some of decent quality most are 4F (rejects/Culls) from the breeder/supplier

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?
puffers are notorious for being nasty tempered, I dont know about the poison thing but most puffers are, they do need brackish water to survive in the long run

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[/quote]

brita dosnt remove chlorine in the water. it may remove a little but not all, you need a good chlorine remover, I reccoment prime, it's the best that I've heard of.