DCtank
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
I recently set up a 29 gallon freshwater tank. The friendly guy at my LFS offered to give me a bag of bacteria to "get me started." (He shook out a large filter from one of his tanks.) So, I started with three sunset fire platies (and the bag of bacteria) and never had the ammonia or nitrite spikes I was expecting after reading about them in a book and on many websites. Every day of the first week my readings were ammonia 0, nitrite 0 and nitrate 0. LFS guy said I could get more fish so I added 3 zebra danios a couple days ago (with the intention of getting 5 more soon). Readings are still 0, 0 and, now, nitrate 5ppm. Am I missing something or did that bag of bacteria really do the trick?
if he shook out the filter media and shook it into a bag then it very well could have fully cycled a lightly stocked tank. I would keep checking parameters as you add more fish though because you may have all the needed bacteria but the population is probably small meaning only small amounts of ammo can be converted until it has a chance to build up.
to AA!
