Recent content by MikeMTL

Thank you. Very helpful.

Will the beneficial bacteria really start dying if not constantly fed? I am doing my huge WC today and getting fish on Sunday. I don't want to add more ammonia if I don't have to. It'll be about 48 hours from when my ammonia and nitrite are 0ppm to the point I add fish. My airstone and filter...

What if I add fish very slowly?

Many many doses. I had some problems at the beginning. I'm coming up to about day 60 of cycling.

Can too high nitrates cause nitrites to drop more slowly? I'm at the finish line with my cycling. My ammonia (about 1.5ppm) is getting converted in less than 24 hours but my nitrites are taking about 30 hours. Should I be doing a WC? It's been like that for the past 4-5 days. I want it to be...

I finally got my ammonia to drop relatively quickly. Now all i'm waiting for is my nitrites to drop as quickly. Is it normal that it was almost 3 days for my nitrites to drop (after I dose ammonia)? Also, my nitrates are very high, obviously. Should I do a WC to bring them down or will it not...

The platy is in there temporarily. No worries.

25 gallon tank

I'm scared to add in just 2-3 neon tetras as I heard they can get pretty stressed in groups of less than 6. Would it be a problem if I add 3 one week and another 3 maybe a week or 2 later?

I've had to do a fish in cycle (please don't kill me - I'm doing it as responsibly as possible). I have 1 platy in there right now and it seems to be working well. Now my question is, what happens when I want to stock more than 1 fish? Right now my bacterial colony is growing to handle the waste...

But wouldn't doing a WC not allow the bacteria to grow?

I was using ammonia. It wasn't working. Completely stakes, and never got under way. I did a 90% WC and I am finally starting to see nitrites. Now I am doing a fish-in cycle with a platy. I am carefully monitoring ammonia though.

I've been trying to cycle for almost 40 days without success. I decided to do a 90% WC last week to maybe start over. Well, today this was my reading of nitrites. The one on the left is my aquarium and the one on the right is my tap water. The tap water is absolutely 0 ppm. The one on the left...