Need a bit of advice on how I should properly cycle given my situation.
So I bought a marina 5 gallon led kit on Amazon which should arrive within the next 5 days, assuming it comes intact and it holds water when it arrives, I was wondering how to cycle a tank in preparation for shrimp, without using fish, with fluval biological enhancer to cultivate bacteria on my seachem "the bag" filter media. The tank will have fluval shrimp and plant stratum for substrate, and live plants, assuming they also arrive in good enough condition to survive.
Am I going to be able to simply plant my tank, add the bioenhancer to the media and test for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels, then once it has stabilized add shrimp to the tank?
A little more background info, my tap water is well water, comes out at 0ppm, dechloronated pure water, average Ph 7 (using an older test meter my dad has from when he was plumbing) I have a hood with a 6500k day simulation light, marimo shrimp moss balls, the kit will come with a marina s10 filter, and possibly the most noteworthy item is that I have treated some lavarocks found off the side of a local dormant volcano. They were sequetially scrubbed with a hand brush, bleached (10% bleach solution) boiled (2 to 3 hours @206.4f) scrubbed with 3 different wire brushes to shave down the rocks and remove the growing/dead/bleached plants and bacteria, bleached, scrubbed with wire brushes, boiled, scrubbed with wire brushes again, and then rinsed off. I still need to inspect them once more to ensure they are clear of all white spots that appeared after the bleaching, but I'm pretty confident they are tank ready and safe at this point.
Any advice relative to my situation would be awesome!
So I bought a marina 5 gallon led kit on Amazon which should arrive within the next 5 days, assuming it comes intact and it holds water when it arrives, I was wondering how to cycle a tank in preparation for shrimp, without using fish, with fluval biological enhancer to cultivate bacteria on my seachem "the bag" filter media. The tank will have fluval shrimp and plant stratum for substrate, and live plants, assuming they also arrive in good enough condition to survive.
Am I going to be able to simply plant my tank, add the bioenhancer to the media and test for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels, then once it has stabilized add shrimp to the tank?
A little more background info, my tap water is well water, comes out at 0ppm, dechloronated pure water, average Ph 7 (using an older test meter my dad has from when he was plumbing) I have a hood with a 6500k day simulation light, marimo shrimp moss balls, the kit will come with a marina s10 filter, and possibly the most noteworthy item is that I have treated some lavarocks found off the side of a local dormant volcano. They were sequetially scrubbed with a hand brush, bleached (10% bleach solution) boiled (2 to 3 hours @206.4f) scrubbed with 3 different wire brushes to shave down the rocks and remove the growing/dead/bleached plants and bacteria, bleached, scrubbed with wire brushes, boiled, scrubbed with wire brushes again, and then rinsed off. I still need to inspect them once more to ensure they are clear of all white spots that appeared after the bleaching, but I'm pretty confident they are tank ready and safe at this point.
Any advice relative to my situation would be awesome!
