Greetings from Montreal, Canada.
During the holidays I mentioned the idea of starting an aquarium to my brother in law when they were over for lunch one day, and he talked me into it. I'm currently a little over 2 weeks into a fishless cycle using flakes, and things are progressing nicely (though nowhere near as fast as I'd like!).
So far I've dealt with a bacterial bloom, which doesn't seem unusual from my extensive googling and reading (since there's nothing else to do but wait). A 50% water change, gravel vac and rinsing the decorations and wood off cleared the water up nicely.
I'm dropping in a large pinch of flakes each day, and the ammonia seemed to cap out at about 1ppm. Without using actual ammonia, this seems to be about the best I can hope for. Each day for the last week, my ammonia tests have come back less and less green. Right now I'm definitely below 0.25 ppm ammonia, but not yet at 0. My nitrite is a bright purple, making it hard to read the test accurately, so I've been testing with a 50% and 25% cut of aquarium water with aged tap water and multiplying the result by 2 and 4 respectively. My best guess is they're between 4 and 5. After a 50% water change to ease up the bacteria bloom, my nitrates are still climbing, so I know things are cycling. There's a couple of plants in there, and a moss ball. Eventually I'll be throwing in some java moss and fern as well.
This is going to be a community planted shrimp tank. I'll probably end up getting a hang on breeding box to drop the pregnant shrimp in to help the survival rate, as they will be sharing the main tank with 6-12 cardinal tetras and another 6-12 Zebra Danios. Once the cycle is done, I'm planning on adding the shrimp, and then fish 6 at a time each week just to give the filter a chance to develop with the bioload and not throw things out of balance.
During the holidays I mentioned the idea of starting an aquarium to my brother in law when they were over for lunch one day, and he talked me into it. I'm currently a little over 2 weeks into a fishless cycle using flakes, and things are progressing nicely (though nowhere near as fast as I'd like!).
So far I've dealt with a bacterial bloom, which doesn't seem unusual from my extensive googling and reading (since there's nothing else to do but wait). A 50% water change, gravel vac and rinsing the decorations and wood off cleared the water up nicely.
I'm dropping in a large pinch of flakes each day, and the ammonia seemed to cap out at about 1ppm. Without using actual ammonia, this seems to be about the best I can hope for. Each day for the last week, my ammonia tests have come back less and less green. Right now I'm definitely below 0.25 ppm ammonia, but not yet at 0. My nitrite is a bright purple, making it hard to read the test accurately, so I've been testing with a 50% and 25% cut of aquarium water with aged tap water and multiplying the result by 2 and 4 respectively. My best guess is they're between 4 and 5. After a 50% water change to ease up the bacteria bloom, my nitrates are still climbing, so I know things are cycling. There's a couple of plants in there, and a moss ball. Eventually I'll be throwing in some java moss and fern as well.
This is going to be a community planted shrimp tank. I'll probably end up getting a hang on breeding box to drop the pregnant shrimp in to help the survival rate, as they will be sharing the main tank with 6-12 cardinal tetras and another 6-12 Zebra Danios. Once the cycle is done, I'm planning on adding the shrimp, and then fish 6 at a time each week just to give the filter a chance to develop with the bioload and not throw things out of balance.
I hope they have it! 
