OP
OP
Yeah, I planned to do a decent sized water change tomorrow, regardless of my stats (probably about 30%). My dad is coming over, and he will be taking care of things while I am away during the summer, so he needs to see how it works. And since I'll be changing some of the water, why not change a little extra.
I agree that the "20-hour" method I have employed is certainly not what anyone would recommend. I feel fairly confident that over the past 3 months of reading, reading and more reading, that I am ready to handle any water stat issue that might come along. (I was, and still am, totally unprepared for a danio with a bloated abdomen.)
Just a quick update, now that the fish are in the tank - the activity level has risen dramatically. The zebras have come out of hiding and are now shoaling with the rasboras. The rasboras are all over the place now! (It's amazing what increasing the numbers does to the behaviors!) When I first put the rasboras in the tank the other 3 came over, like to say: "Hey, we're over here" and immediately they formed a nice little school - very compact and tight. A few minutes later, the new ones were searching out the new surroundings, and it seemed to be the older ones that kept trying to bring them back to the territory they have claimed.
The pandas were a totally different story. I put them in, and each one seemed to go to a different spot on the bottom to sort out what had just happened. After a few minutes though, they finally got together (well, 5 of them, 1 was still off on his/her own). They all seem far more active already than they had been previously. I feel very good about my decision to forego the "normal" route, and take the chance of causing a mini-cycle. But, as I said in the previous post, there is more than just the mature media in the filter. I also have a fully cycled on a 10 gallon tank filter media, which was asked to cycle a bigger tank and struggled with the higher dose a bit. But, if you consider the original 7 fish, adding 3 pandas to that mix wouldn't really be a big taxation on the fully cycled media, and the 10 gallon filter media could handle the 4th panda and the smaller rasboras without too much difficulty. With the planned water change on Friday, and another scheduled one for Sunday, I figure that I won't actually see any ammonia or nitrite at all. But, if I do, I will be ready. I will do another change on Thursday and then again on the following Sunday. If all still looks good and the zebras are still going strong, I will add a few more to give the female a chance to expel her eggs (if that's the issue).
Picture of the tank to follow in a few hours... still waiting for the glare monster to go to sleep for the night!
I just did a 25-30% water change, and the pH has dropped now to 7.4. I'm not overly concerned with the pH being where it is, but as to why it has increased. 
It is probably for the best, as I didn't want it to infect all the other fish. This leaves me with a question regarding the other zebra danio. Do you suppose I'd be able to take it to a LFS? I don't want it to be alone (I think it has already started nipping some fins of my rasboras), but I don't want to get more zebras either. They are just not a part of my stocking plan. 
