Starting Out Fish Cycle

[darrene]

quick question.

i am starting a new tropical fishtank setup could someone please help me with the cycling process. i have 35o l tank i will be getting a eheim filter. i will be filling the tank with ro water, how long should i keep the lighting on and how long do ineed to wait before planting up then adding stock

thankyou

 

[Lynda B]

There are various "stickies" regarding how to cycle your tank. They're chock full of great information. I suggest you just read through those for the best advice. Good luck to you!

This will help! http/www.fishforums.net/Fishless-Cycling-t113861.html

 

[Straydum]

depends on what fishes you are getting. fishes like puffers requires mature tanks that has been running for months. u could speed things up by getting a tank started solution from your LFS

 

[rdd1952]

If you are planning on cycling with fish, then you should add plants and as many as you can fit in as soon as possible, even before the fish as they will have immediate hiding places and it is less stressful on them than you having your hands in the tank rooting around in the substrate while they're in there. Also, plants actually use ammonia in it's original state so a heavily planted tank can be stocked immediately and the plants will take care of the ammonia. I wouldn't stock too heavily but you could add 3 or 4 fish and test ammonia and nitrite daily to make sure they stay at zero.

As for the lights, for live plants generally 10 to 14 hours a day is normal. It really depends on the type plants you get and their requirements though. Get a good timer and set it o the lights come on and go off the same time each day so you don't have to rmember it. It also seems that most people break the lighted time up. Some say it helps prevent algae but I'm not sure if that's true or not. I break mine so that the lights are on in the morning (4 hours) and evening (6 hours) when we are at home to see the fish.

 

[darrene]

how much lighting is suffecient on the trigon 350 ihave 2 x15w and 2 x 30w

 

[Aphotic Phoenix]

The "easy" measurement for how much light you need is fluorescent watts per US gallons...although I think it does get a little bit different when you start dealing with larger tanks, so maybe someone who is more experienced with aquatic gardening can help you more than I can.

Your tank is ~95 US gallons, and you have 90 watts of light...so a little less than 1 WPG. 1 WPG is usually considered low light so go with plants like Java Moss, Java Fern, and Anubias. Hopefully others can give you some other options.