ready to go

[retorres70]

ok ready to start cycling. 55 gal is up rocks, dec. everything is ready to go. am taking a big piece of dec. from my 30 gal. so hoping it shouldn't take too long. so correct me if i am wrong.
set up tank as if fish were in it. add the dec. from 30 gal. and let err rip. let filter go? or no filter? test water daily with test kit and when ammonia is 0 and showing nitrites it is ok to add a few of the fish at a time. maybe 2 a day? how will i know how when its ok to add all fish from 30 gal.

 

[TankGirl]

Run your filter, run your heater, and calculate how much ammonia you need to add to the tank to bring it up to 5ppm. This is how much you will add every day. When ammonia is zero and you are showing nitrites you are only halfway there, with nitrifying bacteria, and now you need to wait on the denitrifying bacteria.

The fish do not like the nitrite, so you have to wait until that goes to zero as well, continuing to feed the bacteria daily with ammonia. When you are showing zero ammonia, zero nitrite and starting to see some nitrAte, then it is okay to start adding a few fish from the 30. It might take several weeks if you have added some seed material from the 30, but it depends.