Fishless Cycle - Ammonia Question

[FlyingPanda]

Hey folks,

I have a 15 gallon tank going through a fishless cycle at the moment, i've now gotten to the stage where it's dropping 1.00PPM of Ammonia in a 24 hour period, Nitrites are 0, Nitrates 80 (Using API Master Test Kit).

My plan is to put in 6-8 Neon Tetras in the tank once the cycle is complete but i'm wondering how much Ammonia needs to drop every 24 hours before i'm able to go ahead with this amount of fish in a 15 gallon? It's just that i've seen some people say it's 1PPM, 2, 4, some even say you need 2-4PPM to drop within 12 hours, not 24, Any help would be much appreciated!

 

[fluttermoth]

You only need to be processing about 2ppm of ammonia. Even that's more than a few neons would produce, but you do want to give yourself a bit of a buffer. You'd want to cycle to the higher amounts if you were adding a lot of Malawis or a large, heavy stocking like that all at once.

I would say though that neons don't do very well in new tanks, even if they're properly cycled. Are you planning on any other fish you could add first and leave the neons for a month or two?

 

[FlyingPanda]

I aim to have 6-8 neons with a male betta as i've seen alot of success stories with this combination, however i wanted to get the neons first so as to get them comfortable with the tank as i thought throwing them in with a Betta already in there might be a bit stressful to them, getting a Betta first would suit me alot more but yeah, i don't want the Neon's to feel a bit daunted when they first go in, i'll have to give it another thought i suppose, thanks for the reply.