Hey there everyone! As some of you know, I bought my first tank yesterday, a 40 gal breeder. Still looking for a stand, so nothing is set up yet, but I have been reading about fishless cycling for a while now, and following some different threads on this forum as members go through the process.
I have a pretty good grasp on it, but one thing kind of confuses me. I get that you add the ammonia in a level that would be leathal to fish in order to build up the bacteria to a level that can handle that much ammonia. Once the colony is built up to handle such a load, you need to keep feeding it so it doesn't die off until you add fish.
My question comes in with the adding fish part. If I cycled my tank, and have a colony of bacteria able to chow down 5ppm ammonia in less than 24 hrs, then I add let's say 7-8 zebra danios into the tank, will they create enough bioload to keep that colony of bacteria alive or will I loose most of it?
I guess I'm concerned that when I add the second group of fish it will be an overload and ammonia will spike harming the fish because the colony I created didn't have enough "food" to sustain with only a few fish. Should I add more fish at once? I seem to find conflicting reports on this part.
I have a pretty good grasp on it, but one thing kind of confuses me. I get that you add the ammonia in a level that would be leathal to fish in order to build up the bacteria to a level that can handle that much ammonia. Once the colony is built up to handle such a load, you need to keep feeding it so it doesn't die off until you add fish.
My question comes in with the adding fish part. If I cycled my tank, and have a colony of bacteria able to chow down 5ppm ammonia in less than 24 hrs, then I add let's say 7-8 zebra danios into the tank, will they create enough bioload to keep that colony of bacteria alive or will I loose most of it?
I guess I'm concerned that when I add the second group of fish it will be an overload and ammonia will spike harming the fish because the colony I created didn't have enough "food" to sustain with only a few fish. Should I add more fish at once? I seem to find conflicting reports on this part.
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