Wow, Look! It's... Another Fishless Cycle Diary?

[nork]

Day 19 PM and day 20 AM (today) updated.

After 5 days of consistent Ammonia/Nitrite quick processing, I'm putting all my chips on the bet that my tank has officially been cycled.

Right now I'm on the last 1/4 part of the re-fill of a 90%+ water change.

I'll treat the water, let it get close to the desired temp for housing my cichlids, and it's off to collect the little guys and gals!



A big thanks to all who took time to read this diary and a bigger thanks to everyone who helped out, especially WD.

What I've seen in this diary is the main reason why I don't even bother with any other fish forums.

 

[Mounit98]

WTG Nork!!! I bet your excited to get your fishtank filled up with fish!!!

Good luck!

 

[nork]

Ok, the tank is stocked and all fish have been in for about an hour.

The stocking consists of:

4 Labinochromis caeruleus (Electric Yellow Labs)
4 Pseudotropheus crabro (Bumblebees)
4 Pseudotropheus acei (Yellow Tail Aceis)
4 Pseudotropheus greshakei (Albino Red Finned Zebras)
2 Bristlenose Plecs (2 females)

The Bumblebees took straight to the caves, not in a manner that made it seem like they're nervous in their new environment, but in a manner like they've lived there for years.

The Yellow Tail Aceis seem to be exploring their new digs in their own group, swimming all around, in and out of caves all together.

The electric yellows and albinos are all hanging out together on one side of the tank racing up to the top and back down. Not sure what's really going on, but I'm letting them do their thing. Every now and then a couple of the yellow labs will join the yellow tail aceis on their exploration.

The plecos are all over the place, testing out all the different surfaces.

Can't wait for our daughter to come home and see all her new fish!

I'll also be picking up another filter, as one penguin 350 isn't really enough to handle these messy bastids as they grow bigger. Right now they're all juvies, about 2" long.

I'll post pics tonight when there's not so much glare on the glass.

 

[nork]

As promised, here's a few pics. These little buggers are hard to catch sitting still, so excuse the semi-focused shots, they're the best I could get.

The tank:

Albino Red Finned Zebra:

Electric Yellow:

Bumblebee:

Yellow Tail Acei:

The plecs are impossible to photograph, as they've been sucking around towards the back of the tank for the most part of their short stay so far.

All are about 1 1/2" - 2" long. The albinos are the biggest of the bunch and 3 of the 4 aceis are the smallest of the bunch.
So far, all seem to be getting along. No fighting, no aggression yet. Over half of them seem to be swimming around together in a big group, like a big happy school of friends.

 

[nork]

 

[-Craig-]

The stacked rocks and that look like mine, nice tank mate.

 

[waterdrop]

Wow, really striking there Nork! Congrats on final setup and pics!

That almost looks like a cichlid hotel! First time I've found myself worrying that fish might get crushed in a fish earthquake attack! You'll have to take extra care when doing your weekly siphon clean!

Great colors on some of those fish!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[nork]

Thanks guys.

It may not look like it, but those stacks took at least 2 hours to do. I did it level by level, arranging every stone and slab so that it wouldn't rock at all.

Some of the smaller black stones may only look decorative, but a couple of them are there to add just the right amount of weight.

 

[waterdrop]

Nork,

How would you estimate that the body-inches (fins not counting) added up that you added (not going by eventual adult size but going by current size of the fish? How would that compare with your inch guideline stocking number? I'm just trying to gain more info to guess to what extent it was the stocking or just a late nitrite spike that occurred after the stocking.

WD

 

[nork]

Excluding fins, there's not a fish over 2" long in my tank. I'm at work now so I can't really give a solid guess, but I'd say more of them are closer to the 2" range, but a few would be more like 1-1/2", so even at the max 2", all fish, including the plecos, would be 36" worth of fish.

 

[waterdrop]

So, not correcting for adult size of course, we're talking a little over one half of the inch guideline type of stocking, right? I just don't see that as likely to cause a spike in a fully cycled tank after the big water change. I guess our only conclusion can be that our qualifying week of double-zeros at 12 hours did not come through for us this time - would you agree?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[nork]

That's the only thing I could think of.

I know for a fact I read all test readings correctly, as well as reporting them here, I was constantly checking the thermometer every day, always at 84*F, very anal about testing the water at the same, specific times each day. As well as adding the same exact amount of ammonia at the same time every day, except for the first couple days of my 12-hour schedule when I bumped up the evening times and ammonia adds by 30 minutes each day to get to 6:30 PM (took 3 days) to get there from 8:00 PM.

So if that's the case, what's the best thing to do at this point? Keep monitoring the parameters, performing water changes, and wait for the cycle to actually complete?

 

[waterdrop]

Oh yeah, that's absolutely the only thing you -can- do when you get mini-cycles, you have to consider yourself to be in a "fish-in cycling situation" and proceed accordingly. The goal in fish-in is always to figure out a percentage and frequency of water changing that does not allow either ammonia or nitrite to go above 0.25ppm before you can be home again to test and potentially perform yet another water change. It may be that your N-Bacs have just take a bit of some sort of shock and will settle back down again fairly quickly. Let's hope!

~~waterdrop~~