Finally Done My Fish Less Cycle

[andy_sheff]

hello, well finally the cycle is done, here is where im at, changed water on monday just put a little bit of amonia in yesterday morning to keep things going but none today as i want to get fish tonight. The water has 10ppm of nitrate and every thing else is spot on, can i put fish in? Does the bacteria not die off if you dont put a lot of fish in straight away cos of the drop in amonia? How much ppm is safe for nitrates? Anything else i need to know at this stage? Thanks a lot.

 

[Bobtastic]

I can only assume that the amount of bacteria will reduce if you understock for the colony of bacteria that you have established in your filter.

I think the main point of doing a fishless cycle is so that you can get to your full stocking level without having to faff about with a couple of fish at a time, that and reducing the stress on the fishies!

 

[andy_sheff]

yer, is it ok for the fishes to put loads in in a short space of time?

 

[waterdrop]

Yeah, Hi Andy, glad to hear you're finally stocking! By the time you see this you will probably already have bought and added fish!

Everything sounds just fine. Nitrates of 10 is fine, quite nice in fact. The bacterial colonies are quite slow to die off any from lack of ammonia, takes days to be significant, so don't worry about that with the time frame you're talking about.

Yes, the fishless cycle will have prepared your system to handle a full stocking of fish, although its fairly rare that anyone really does that other than single-species or few-species more unusual tanks. Its usually more common for people to have identified a few fish they want, like neons/cards or GBRs or such, that are better off introduced some months down the road (the late introduction having nothing to do with the biofilter parameters but other stuff)... but there's only a minority of species like that and its still pretty common for the first fish introduction after a good fishless cycle to be quite large, to take advantage of those large bacterial colonies currently built up by the 5ppm dosing level.

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[andy_sheff]

thanks water drop. Help full as always. Your right i have got some fish today i got 2 angel fish about an inch long body, 6 neon shoaling fish. And two bottom feeders which i forgot the name. There white witha black fin and a black stripe on front and one on back, she wouldnt sell me any more even tho i told her about the cycle. Am ok to im tomorrow and get some more fish? I got some co2 tablets too to help the plants,. I may have been wrong with the nitrate level, it is between 20 and 40 i think, shall i change some water?

 

[sjolliff]

she wouldnt sell me any more even tho i told her about the cycle.

Lol, how can they stop you from buying them?

 

[andy_sheff]

thanks water drop. Help full as always. Your right i have got some fish today i got 2 angel fish about an inch long body, 6 neon shoaling fish. And two bottom feeders which i forgot the name. There white witha black fin and a black stripe on front and one on back, she wouldnt sell me any more even tho i told her about the cycle. Am ok to im tomorrow and get some more fish? I got some co2 tablets too to help the plants,. I may have been wrong with the nitrate level, it is between 20 and 40 i think, shall i change some water?

 

[andy_sheff]

sorry about the double post, im doing this off my phone, she just did not approve of buying more than that amount and wouldnt let me buy more!

 

[waterdrop]

No, nitrates between 20 and 40 is fine. Don't change water for that. Let your fish settle in.

...maybe they're Panda corys??

~~waterdrop~~

 

[arobinson1984]

Hi Andy,

What size is the tank and what are the dimensions? This will help us in giving any stocking suggestions.

Ideally after a fishless cycle you should either fully stock or stock up to about 80% otherwise the bacteria will start to die off and you would experience mini cycles whenever any new fish are added at a later date

Andy

 

[andy_sheff]

panda, thats the ones, its a juwel rio 180, any help with stocking would be good, im going to go tomorrow after work for some more fish, i fancy one or two decent size ones in there as well,. . At what ppm of nitrate should i change some water?

 

[arobinson1984]

Its recommended to keep nitrates roughly 10/20 ppm above what your tap water reads or keep it below 40ppm

You dont need toworry as even at 40ppm your fish will be fine, many can handles nitrates well over 100ppm and some have even been reported to live in 1000ppm so 40ppm is just a rough guide so dont worry about doing a change just yet, wait a couple of days and let your fish settle in then you can do one if you wish to.

How about a nice pair of bolivian rams, they are colourful and would make a nice centrepiece fish, or perhaps a pair of gouramis, pearl gouramis are eye catching.

EDIT - Just to add, the bolivian rams require a low nitrate reading of about 20/30ppm max so whether you could have them depends on what your tap water reading is and how frequent you will perform water changes on a weekly basis.

Andy

 

[andy_sheff]

cool, thanks. Ile have a look tonight, any more ideas welcome

 

[waterdrop]

How are your fish doing in their new home?

WD

 

[andy_sheff]

so far so good, they seem to be happy, just trying to work out how much food they want, the little pandas are loving all the bits off the sand, popped them a pelet in for bottom feeders but they havent touched it, its about the size of a chocolate button, might be too big for them or they might have enough on there plate with the stuff off the sand.