I Think I Have Finally Decided On What Fish To Get...

[CuriouslyFishy]

So, for the past few months I have been researching, researching, researching, and have finally decided on which fish to get for my 25 Gallon Aqueon Aquarium with an Aqueon Quiet Flow Filter and a 100 Watt Heater. I have decided to get 3 Dwarf Gourami's and 5 or 6 Bloodfin Tetra's. I used this website: http/www.##150###.com to determine how much room these fish will take up and it said only 68 percent of the tank. It also said to change 15 percent of the water weekly. I am not sure when I will get these fish(my parents haven't completely said yes, yet) but when I do I will make sure to fishlessly cycle my tank. I do however, have one question. "How do I cycle a tank?"
Lol, pretty big question I know but of all the sites I've searched I couldn't for the life of me figure out the instructions.
Thanks to whoever reads this and helps me with my question.
P.S. Has anybody ever used this combination of fish. Did it work out? Did it backfire? Any info is aprreciated.
Thanks!

 

[CuriouslyFishy]

Bump, please anybody?

 

[QuantumOptician]

A fishless cycle involves dosing a tank with ammonia (if you live in the UK click here if you live in the US click here, see this link for more info). The end goal is to culture a colony of bacteria to turn ammonia (fish waste) into nitrite and then culture another colony of bacteria to turn the nitrite into nitrate. The only way to get rid of the nitrates are through water changes.
There are two common methods of fishless cycling a tank to achieve this goal: the add and wait method and the add daily method (take a look here to learn more about the differences between the methods. Essentially, to do this you use you can use this calculator to determine how much ammonia needs to be added to reach the desired concentration for your tank. The two methods differ in when the ammonia is added. The add and wait requires that you add the ammonia to 4 or 5 ppm and keep testing until the ammonia concentration dips below 1 ppm (if you have a fishkeeping friend with mature filter media that would greatly speed up this process, just ask them for ~1/3 of the filter media from 1 of their tanks). The add daily method requires that you does 4 ppm per day.
I will now assume that you are doing the add and wait method as it is not as straightforward as the add daily method.
After the initial batch of ammonia has dropped below 1ppm (you can probably get away with not testing very much, if at all, the first week as the bacteria will take about ~7 days to process this first batch of ammonia) you should redose up to 4 or 5 ppm again and repeat the testing. Now once your bacteria are turning ammonia into nitrite another colony will begin to form that will turn nitrite into nitrate. This generally takes about twice the amount of time it takes for the ammonia consuming colony to form. Once Nitrites begin to show up you should begin testing the water daily (it doesn't hurt to test daily prior to this point, but many wait until they begin to see nitrites). Now, to achieve the end goal you are looking for your ammonia to go from 4-5 ppm to 0 ppm in 12 hours and your nitrite to go to 0 in 12 hours. After this happens once you are almost done. General consensus seems to be that you want to dose to 4-5 ppm and achieve double zeros (when both ammonia and nitrite are 0) in 12 hours for 7 straight days. Now once this is done likely your nitrates will be very high. You should do a large water change (~ 75% or more) to lower the nitrates. Now you are ready to add fish! If you are not able to add fish immediately, keep dosing ammonia to ensure that the nice bacteria colony you just cultured remains alive.

The only thing I have heard about Dwarf Gourami's is that it is not advisable to keep more than 1 male in a tank that small as the males will fight each other much like 2 or more male bettas will fight.

Edit: I forgot to add: Set your heater fairly high (~low to mid 80's [Fahrenheit of course]) this will increase the reproduction rate of the bacteria. Also, it is a good idea to test the conditions of your tap water just so you have a baseline reading )It may help you in the long run if you are diagnosing a problem that is occurring in your tank).

 

[minnnt]

I would also invest in a 150w heater as 100w isn't big enough for your tank. It is recommended that 1 litre of water needs 1 watt of power to heat it.