Ok so, I am a new fish owner. This is my first time owning and tank and I am completely oblivious to the whole tank cycle process, ammonia, nitrates, yada yada yada, untill just today. I purchased 5 glo fish, and 2 of them have died today due to ammonia poisoniong, which I discoverd from a bit of research, now the three I have alive are still pretty active, however one of them for sure has the typical reddening of the gills and fin, so I assuming he is pretty sick as well just not as bad as the dead ones obviously.
Now, here is my big mistake, being the new fish owner I am, I thought, oh no! too much ammonia, need to do a complete water chance asap! WOOPS!
After speaking with the petsmart employee where I purchased the fish, and after I had already done the complete water change, he explained to me a short and sweet version of the cycle process…oh dang I just reset the whole process, which to me I feel I just gave a definite death sentence to the three living fish, since they are already stressed and feeling the effects of the first round of ammonia, now they gotta go through it again. Of course the employee says that may not happen, but I am not stupid, if they barely made it through this round, they definitly gonna bit the dust this time, no thanks to me.
Well!! Now that I know about this stuff, which should have been explained to me by the petsmart people when I purchased the fish to begin with seems how I told them I was a first time fish owner, my big question is, is there anyway to complete the cycle process in a tank without the fish? I would so hate to buy more fish, damning them to a what seems like awful death, if I could avoid it by pre-cycling the tank for them. I was thinking if it can be done, when and if (most like when) my remaining 3 fish die, I might completely clean out the tank, and start from scratch on the cycling buisness. Can it be done? Where can I find information on how to do it?