Adding Fish

[XeroTolerance]

Hello everybody. As some of you know I'm busy cycling my 10 gallon tank. I will stock it with 5 Flame Tetras, 2 Mystery Snails, 1 Ghost Shrimp, and one Platy. Do you have any ideas what type of platy will look good with my Flame tetras?

Here is the update on the cycle. First of all im doing it fishless. This morning I checked the water after dosing back to 3ppm of ammonia for the first time last night. These are my results. Ammonia .50-1ppm/ Nitrites 5+ppm/ pH 7.6/ Nitrates 5ppm/. Everything seems to be going well. My Nitrites seem to "eat" 2ppm of ammonia every 22 hours. Tomorrow when I test I expect it to be back down to 0ppm.

Should I add the 5 Flame Tetras first, or should I add the platy and than the Flame tetras a few days later? Do you think I should just add all of them at once? My tank can defiantly handle the full bio-load because of the large amounts of ammonia it is currently converting. I think I'll add the one ghost shrimp with whatever fish I'm going to add last if I do add them at different times.

Thanks for reading.

 

[waterdrop]

Well, most platies that I've seen would probably look good with flame tetras, you really have to just stare at them in the shops and think about what you want.

Sounds like you are in the second of the three fishless cycling phases. I assume you plan to get through the 3rd phase and then your "qualifying week" to know the filter is cycled, right?

The way you know you're ready to start your qualifying week is when you can drop a full 5ppm ammonia concentration to true zero ppm ammonia and zero ppm nitrite(NO2) within 12 hours of when the 5ppm was dosed.

The qualifying week just makes sure it's not going to mini-spike on you when you switch over to fish. An ideal way to stock after fishless cycling is to figure out which species would give you about a 75% stocking and then introduce one last group to bring things on up to full stocking.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[XeroTolerance]

Uh...I already put in the fish. I didn't think the 5+ levels of nitrite was bad for them....

Just kidding. Of course I know not to. I am surprised about how fast it was going. In reality though it took two weeks for the ammonia levels to drop because I had my two mystery snails in the tank for a week before adding ammonia. I'm also going to do the qualifying week test too.

Thanks for your help.

 

[SunsetPlatyGeek]

Hello everybody. As some of you know I'm busy cycling my 10 gallon tank. I will stock it with 5 Flame Tetras, 2 Mystery Snails, 1 Ghost Shrimp, and one Platy. Do you have any ideas what type of platy will look good with my Flame tetras?

Here is the update on the cycle. First of all im doing it fishless. This morning I checked the water after dosing back to 3ppm of ammonia for the first time last night. These are my results. Ammonia .50-1ppm/ Nitrites 5+ppm/ pH 7.6/ Nitrates 5ppm/. Everything seems to be going well. My Nitrites seem to "eat" 2ppm of ammonia every 22 hours. Tomorrow when I test I expect it to be back down to 0ppm.

Should I add the 5 Flame Tetras first, or should I add the platy and than the Flame tetras a few days later? Do you think I should just add all of them at once? My tank can defiantly handle the full bio-load because of the large amounts of ammonia it is currently converting. I think I'll add the one ghost shrimp with whatever fish I'm going to add last if I do add them at different times.

Thanks for reading.

I would suggest doing the platy first because they are the hardiest, wait a week or so then add about 3 of the flame tetras, wait another week, add the rest of the flame tetras. Last but not least, after another week add the snails and ghost shrimp.

 

[XeroTolerance]

Thanks for your advice. I think I'll add them all at once like somebody said before. I might add the Platy a few days later though. My tank is already cycled do I don't need to worry about which is hardiest. Thanks for your help.

 

[Harlequins]

Has waterdrop said,you can add a good 75% of your stocking once you've been through your qualifying week with no hiccups,thats the good thing about fishless cycle,just be aware that you'll need to check your stats for the first few days.

Platys aren't necessarily the hardiest anymore,with lots of in-breeding and mass production of them,as long has the fish are acclimatised well,they should be ok...

 

[XeroTolerance]

Ok, is it okay though to add the Flame tetras and everything first and a day or two latter add the platy? Or would it be okay to add them all at once?

 

[SunsetPlatyGeek]

wait one week before adding the platy.