Newbie just starting fishless cycle on new 25 gal tank

[cwmont13]

Things seem to be going well! It sounds like you have a good plan set forth here- I would set out the buckets & treat them the day before a water change (as long as this is feasible) so the temp is pretty much similar to your tank water. If you have the temp turned up in your tank, start dropping it by 1-2 degrees each day over the next couple of days until its at the temp you want. The only problem I potentially may foresee is that sometimes it takes more than one 100% water change to drop your nitrates down to a reasonable level (tap level)- hopefully, this wont be your case! Your tank will be fine for 24 or 48hrs (or longer) with no ammonia dosed, so dont worry about this! Just be prepared to test daily once you add fish to make sure everything is staying stable.

jlk thanks. As long as I have a 24 to 48 hour window I think I'll be fine with the WC and temp. Not sure yet exactly when I'll add stock, probably in the next week or so but will continue to dose ammonia until I'm ready.

I need to think about what I want to stock. So far I know I have to have glofish because my 6 yr old Daughter has already made that point clear LOL So I'll probably get 6 of those. I need to read up on other stock and check threads here or start a thread on that. Need to read up on drip acclimation too.

I'm going to check over at AqAdvisior and see but my rough estimate is I'll be at about 48% stocking level with the glofish in a 25 gallon tank. Thinking about some Dwarf Gourami's and/or Dwarf Cory's, possibly Snails too. Not sure but looking forward to getting the tank stocked.

I'll keep you posted.

Once again,

 

[jlk]

Good luck! I am not going to be of much help stocking (coldwater girl) but do your research and you should be fine!

 

[librarygirl]

6 Glofish is a good start. You could do a single dwarf gourami as a centerpiece (pairs sometimes don't work out well). I notice you have gravel substrate; is it sharp? If it has more rounded edges it could be fine for Corys (they do best in sand due to their sensitive barbels) but if it's jagged it might hurt them.

 

[cwmont13]

6 Glofish is a good start. You could do a single dwarf gourami as a centerpiece (pairs sometimes don't work out well). I notice you have gravel substrate; is it sharp? If it has more rounded edges it could be fine for Corys (they do best in sand due to their sensitive barbels) but if it's jagged it might hurt them.

librarygirl

Thanks for checking in. My substrate is larger gravel but is all smooth no jagged edges. I'm not really excited about the gravel now that it's in there and wish I would have went with sand. Oh well. Since the tank is done cycling and almost ready to stock, I'm going to live with it.

I was over at AqAdvisor and so far have looked at stocking with

6 glofish
1 dwarf gourami
4 panda cory's

according to the site that would put me at 74% stocking. That still leaves me some room. I actually would like to add some nerite snails in there but just don't know.

Any suggestions? I still might start a thread just to get some more ideas.

 

[cwmont13]

Finally Have Some Fish HOORAY !

Well finished up the tank today and added a few fish. This morning I did my big water change (around 90%). I let the 5 gal buckets of new water sit out for about 24 hours till they cooled down enough, added my Prime to each and did my WC.

PH, HPH, ammonia, and nirtItes were all OK but the nitrAtes were hovering around 40 ppm so I was hesitant to add fish. I wanted to get those trAtes down to around 20 ppm just to be on the safe side. I set out 10 gallons more of water with Prime added and did an additional PWC with those around 4 pm. After the PWC my nitrAtes were at 20 ppm so I was good to go.

Took my Daughter and headed to Petsmart (the closest to my house). They were pretty low on stock so my choices were limited. My Daughter wanted the Glofish but I really didn't want to pay $5.99 each for those, just in case the tank isn't quite right yet. If something's not right, I'd rather not lose some 6 dollar fish.

I showed her the tanks that had fish suitable for our tank and told her to see what she liked. To my surprise she said "daddy, I like these zebra fishies". I walked over to see what she was looking at and they were Zebra Danios which made me happy as I like those and they are an inexpensive and hearty fish. Wanted to get six but settled for three to start. I'll probably pick up another three on Friday. I told my Daughter that after a week or so if everything is going good that we can get some Glofish in there (probably 4).

Got them home, did a drip acclimation, and put them in the tank. That was around 6:00 pm. It's 10:21 right now and so far they are doing good. Swimming around and exploring their new home.

Looking forward to getting the stocking level up over the next few weeks and enjoying our new aquarium

I'm still leaning towards adding 4 panda Cory's and a Dwarf Gourami (I like the fire red) along with the Zebra's and Glofish for my tank. According to AqAdvisior with 6 Zebras, 4 Glofish, 4 Panda Cory's, and 1 Dwarf Gourami I'd be at 91% stocking with a 21% weekly PWC and plenty of filtration capacity.

That should make a nice tank for quite some time (at least till I convince the Wife we need a 55 gallon ).

Once again a big for the help and advice.

 

[jlk]

Thats wonderful!!! Congrats!!!

 

[cwmont13]

Lost a couple of Zebra's

Just a quick update.

I lost one of the Zebras from the first batch of 3 the very next day 09/05. One was swimming funny the next morning and just died. Fish looked fine. Took it back to Petsmart and got another one. All three did good for a few days and then lost another one on 09/08. Went back and they replaced that one. Went to a different Petsmart and bought one more on 09/10 for a total of 4. All 4 are doing fine so far and this weekend I'm going to pick up two more.

Don't know why the two died. Maybe Petrsmart's fish aren't as healthy as they could be. I drip acclimated them for about 30 /40 minutes but still possibly just the shock of transfer or maybe they weren't healthy to begin with. The last one I dripped slower for about an hour before adding to the tank.

I was checking my tank readings like crazy in case the levels were off but the levels have been rock solid at 0 ppm ammonia and nitrItes, < 20 ppm nitrAtes, and PH 7.6 since I added the fish. I was thinking maybe the two died from PH shock and now wished I would have checked the PH from the store water in the bags just to see how much of a difference there might be from mine. I'll check next time for sure.

My Wife and Daughter are so far loving the tank I was worried that my Daughter would freak out hard over the fishies that died because she's a very sensitive 6 year old girl but she actually did pretty good.

Now just have to decide what kind fish to add in a few more weeks.