[photon]

Originally Posted by Bagor

Photon, How are your Danios doing and your nitrite and ammonia levels?

They seem to be quite happy. They still seem to travel in two groups, two that follow the female around and the other two males off on their own. When it's cycled I'll probably get a few more of each to even things out and hopefully get the to school together more.

As for the levels, I didn't test last night but it's all been zero so far! It's a 20 gallon tank and only 5 fish.. and have been using the Stability product to introduce more of the right kind of bacteria.. so I'm anxious to see if the levels will actually spike like they would have if I hadn't used it.

I'm confused here. Where do the Nitrospira originally come from if you were to break the tank in by waiting it out? Are they present in tap water? Also, I was under the impression that the cycle doesn't start until fish are introduced. By introducing the Nitrospira in increased numbers aren't you just speeding up the colonization process?

I would imagine that its in tap water, on the gravel, etc.. and on fish you introduce too I'm sure. I thought it was pretty common stuff?

Anyway that's the theory, the cycle can't really start until the fish are there because there's nothing producing ammonia and nitrites.. the existing bacteria that just happen to be there would consume the existing nitrites and then that's it. Fish produce new wastes which feed the bacteria.

So to cycle in 24 hours, if you introduce the fish, and enough bacteria so that they consume the amount of waste being produced, then you've cycled your tank. That's what I've read people being able to do, unfortunately I couldn't find any live bacteria to purchase so I went with the stuff that's dormant and only went with a small load of fish.

Originally Posted by LGA

I can answer your water oxygenation process. The water gets oxygenated when the water comes out of the filter it disturbs the water surface allowing oxygen to mix in. That's why fish will start suffocating in a still tank (save for certain types of fish which can actually breath atmospheric oxygen). You just need to make sure the surface of your tank is getting adequately disturbed, you don't want a still water surface.

Not necessarily, even still water will have some amount of oxygen exchange, it's just not as much, so you'd have to reduce the amount of fish. That's why they say it's not only the # of gallons in a tank that determine the # of fish, but the shape of the tank too.. a tank with a larger surface area exposed to the air will support more fish.

(http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/be...a/fishcalc.htm)

Another big problem I used to find about my tanks was that when I first started I wasn't matching the temperature of the water I was changing into the tank with the temperature of the tank and the fish were getting shocked from this. I'd just be careful with the temperature of the water you are changing into the tank, make sure it's within the same range.

I was going to ask about this, how do people usually do it? Just try and get the right temperature of water from the tap and let it sit for a day to reach room temperature first? Mixing it with warm water from the hot water tank doesn't seem like a good idea (more minerals in there).