Cycling

[LostInFish]

So I cycled my tank with an established filter and water from a cycled tank and added a group of pentazonas and a week in I noticed a small trace of ammonia now I'm doing daily 50%wc to keep ammonia in check and its been 2 days and still a hint .25ppm of ammonia fish look good and are eating good feeding 1 time a day to keep ammonia level low. It seems to take about 24 hrs to regenerate the Ammonia and nitrite are also present at under .25 ppm it barely shows on API test kit. Here is a pic of today's test I will post more info as I go just wanted to let people know my findings on adding fish to a cycles tank and the effects

 

[LostInFish]

It's been a day now and tested the water and no ammonia or nitrite at this time. A friend moved to another state and couldn't take his fish with so I got them and added them to this tank (oh boy) list of fish added : about 30 BSN plecos, 4 platies, 4 giant danios,4 angel fish. It's been 24 hrs since adding them so far no ammonia, nitrites in the tank. I will certainly be expecting ammonia very soon though as this tank is now fully stocked.

 

[BBradbury]

So I cycled my tank with an established filter and water from a cycled tank and added a group of pentazonas and a week in I noticed a small trace of ammonia now I'm doing daily 50%wc to keep ammonia in check and its been 2 days and still a hint .25ppm of ammonia fish look good and are eating good feeding 1 time a day to keep ammonia level low. It seems to take about 24 hrs to regenerate the Ammonia and nitrite are also present at under .25 ppm it barely shows on API test kit. Here is a pic of today's test View attachment 214931 I will post more info as I go just wanted to let people know my findings on adding fish to a cycles tank and the effects

Hello Make...

Cycling with fish has pretty easy steps. You test the water daily and if a test shows a trace of ammonia or nitrite, you change about 25 percent of the water. A 50 percent change is quite a bit and a change half that amount is plenty. You want to leave some of the nitrogen for the good bacteria to live on.

I'd save the 50 percent water change for later, after the tank is cycled. While you're waiting for the tank to cycle, pick up some floating plants like Duckweed, Pennywort, Anacharis and Hornwort. Just drop these into the tank and they'll help the cycling process. A little standard aquarium salt will help the fish deal with the poorer water conditions. I used a teaspoon for every 5 gallons of new, treated tap water and my fish easily survived the process. Some will "poo-poo" the salt thing, but it works.

Just saying that this is an option. It worked for my first tank.

B

 

[LostInFish]

Ok I will look into that. I read that salt has an inhibitor in it that stops ammonia from changing to nitrites so I'm not using salt for that reason but the plants are a great idea I will try to pick some up from LFS ASAP. The only reason I did such a big WC was because the ammonia was present and I wanted to do away with it before it hurts the fish. But I guess I will try 30%wc next time and see how that goes. Thanks for your response. Much appreciated