General Cycling Questions From A 1st Timer

[Shelly0518]

Until you start getting 0 ammonia and 0 nitrites I would only skim the top of your gravel to pick up waste and any extra food. Wait to start the deeper gravel cleaning until your tank is fully cycled. There is some debate as to how much bacteria is in the gravel, but my personal opinion is that if it is a surface in the aquarium, it will have bacteria and right now you need all the bacteria you can get.

 

[iroc]

So I know my next step in the testers and to buy some prime and not vac the gravel, next question is how often should I be doing water changes at this point or is that driving by my levels??

And as far as feeding, right now there is a zebra danio, a platy and 3 neon tetras, 3 ghost shrimp, and a handfull of snails I am feeding them 1 time a day a very small pinch of flake food, is this enough is it to much???

 

[Shelly0518]

I would recommend 20-25% water changes once per week unless you have a fish death, ammonia levels of .5 or higher, or your fish seem to be acting funny and then do an additional 20-25% change. If you are doing a total gravel cleaning every 4-7 days then yes you could be prolonging the cycle. Once the cycle has completed, deep clean about 1/3 of the gravel weekly.


As far as feeding, I haven't kept snails but the danio and tetras should act like they are starving all the time, so they should devour their food within 20-30 seconds. If at any time you see that their bellies have ballooned out from an overfeeding, just skip the next day's feeding. Feeding them is a trial and error thing that you will figure out, I am sure that you watch your fish and are learning their general behavior. Let this be your guide, as long as you are conscious of not overfeeding, you will be fine

Shelly

 

[iroc]

thank you very much for the info one last question when you say .5 do you mean .05 or .50

 

[Shelly0518]

I mean .5, water change at levels of .5 or more then treat with Prime to get it to 0.

 

[iroc]

Ok I bought liqued tester kits and also did a major change in my tank



80% water change - a change out of all the blue gravel to a netural colored stone


after the completetion of the tank for 3 days I have these levels

ammonia -0
nitrite - 0
nitrate - 20
ph is 7.0
temp is 78 degrees