Cycle Finishing...advice Requested

[DreFish]

So my fishless cycle has almost completed. Its been going for about 6 weeks and now the ammonia drops with 12 hrs and nitrites within 24...so hopefully not too long before the nitrite processes within 12.

With that in mind I thought I would turn my attention onto what next. Being a noob please bear with me I'm sure these questions have been answered before!

My tank is 250l and I was thinking of the following in terms of stocking (many thanks to Davo86 for the suggestions)


centrepiece:
2x Angels
4x Blue Rams

Dithers,
Top - 6x Hatchet fish
middle - 6x Cardinals, 6x Black neons, 6x Rummynose
Bottom - 2x Whiptails and 6x corydoras schwartzi

My questions are -

Can I fully stock once I have verifed (over a week) the fishless cycle has completed? If not what would you suggest in term of stocking and over what period.

What food would you recommend for daily feeds and also any special treats on a less regular basis?

What dechlorinator do you recommend? I assume its about a 20% change each week.

What medicines should I keep on standby?


Apologies for my ignorance, any help appreciated

 

[Westwood]

Im not a expert, its been many years since i did a cycle, but i wouldn't recommend adding all your fish at once, as it may bee too much for the bioload. I would add your hardier fish in first, Black neons, is what i started with, then check Ur water chemistry's and add more fish.

 

[hillmar77]

I actually would go the other route and fully stock your tank..... Depending on how much ammonia you are adding, you might have a huge colony of bacteria present! If you under stock your bacteria will start dying off! So I think you should Fully stock... check your water parameters twice a day, and if ammonia/nitrite is excessive just do a water change( how large of a water change depending on the level of ammonia/nitrite) And your bioload will catch up and this way you are done. If you go the other route you have a chance of going into a mini cycle.

 

[DreFish]

Thanks! just as I thought, both make sense. It's a dilemma , anyone else with an opinion? Also any thoughts on the other questions?

 

[waterdrop]

Gosh, I wrote a really long reply to this yesterday but must have never posted it, argh!

I'll try to remember some of it. First, that looks like a really nice stocking plan, can't really find fault with it and like the sound of it.

hillmar is correct, it can feel weird but you really can fully stock a tank that has been correctly cycled and qualified. I've seen a few cases where things went wrong after a full stocking but there's always been something wrong, such as the stats seeming to be correct but the overall fishless cycling time too short to feel confident about (eg. 3 weeks total.)

However, the vast majority of times there are just other good reasons to do a large but incomplete initial stocking. In your case I can see a couple of possibilities. I think I might initially stock all the dithers except hold out the cardinals and rummys. Both of those are a tad more delicate and would benefit from more overall tank maturing. With the centerpiece fish I might include two of the blue rams (Davo knows a ton more than me about these fish (we're not talking GBRs here are we?)) and then do two more later and the angels later still..OR, I might delay all 6 of them and then do the angels first and then 2 and 2 of the rams. I'd try to get the cardinals in before the angels though and the tank maturity delay for the cardinals would be the real reason for delaying the angels. I know that cards are different from neons and many feel that cards are simply not has fragile but I still like to give them more tank maturity. I have no experience with black neons but think I've heard they are more hardy.

I'd highly recommend Seachem Prime for the conditioner and I'd dose it at 1.5x to 2x throughout the first 6 months. I'd then continue using it for the first two years and after that I'd reevaluate based on price if you can find any concentrated pond dechlor products which come out to less when you do all the per water volume calculations (Prime is very cheap when you compare on a per treated gallon basis.) Prime is also extremely good at helping beginners through small water problems, thus the 2 yr recommendation for beginners.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[DreFish]

Cheers Waterdrop...good advice.

Any suggestions for feeding?

 

[waterdrop]

Oldman47 and many other experienced ones on here have had good posts about feeding advice that may be found in searches. Obviously if you managed to go to the great trouble, fresh foods can be very good, frozen foods in between that and flake and flake can sustain them just fine, but its ideal to get in some variation.

A couple of tips are, first, to recognize that brine shrimp are a little like "junk food for fish" and should be used only sparingly in on occasion and secondly that bloodworms can be overly rich for fish (some report losing fish to the resulting digestive problems) and so should be used only very carefully. Its very helpful in the beginning if you can buy the smallest flake cannisters possible so that you can try different types and see which your fish like. Be aware that its not unusual to obtain flake that is very old and stale and not loved by the fish - I've had this become apparent when offered in comparison and one sees which food they take the most.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[DreFish]

Cheers waterdrop great advice as always