Woo-Hoo I'm cycled :D

[ZeldaUpNorth]

My tank this morning is reading 6.6 ph, 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, and 160 nitrates so i'm finally cycled. Started on the 24/4 so took exactly 3 weeks. Not getting fish until the weekend so i can be sure it is cycled and its not a fluke but i'm so excited

Lucky you! I started cycling my dwarf puffer tank before you and I am still seeing bloody nitrites. Grr!

Woohoo! What are you getting?

I still haven't even started my cycle yet, I've had my bottle of ammonia sitting around for ages and I've done nothing I keep getting distracted by gardening.

Dp does the gardening (sometimes ) so i dont have to worry about that. I'm planning on 8 harlequin rasboras (only wanted about 6 but they come in 4's) , 5 guppies and 6 panda corys. I go on another forum and they've said that stock list is ok so i'm happy with that. May add a few shrimp too but dp doesn't like the look of them lol Also have about 1000000000 snails that hitchhiked in off the plants but i dont have the heart to kill them.

Sounds like a great stocking, all fab fish! Shrimps are great, mine are thriving and we have lots of cute little shrimplets.

If you want to get rid of shrimps you have three options:
1: Crush them
2: Get assassin snails
3: Set up a dwarf puffer tank (like me) and feed them to him/her

See i'm too soft to do any of that lol. I can't kill a living thing (soft shite) I heard that once i get fish the snails will reduce in number as there wont be enough food for them, so going to see if that happens first. At the minute there is loads of diatom in there and thats what the snails are feeding on. I'm going to vacuum it all up before i get the fish.

If you take care not to overfeed then the number of snails will reach a manageable level but you won't be rid of them completely.

Crikey, I missed your nitrAte reading, wow! Is your tap water nitrAte high?

Not sure have not tested it. I thought that was normal for nitrates at the end of a cycle? Of course will do a big water change before i get the fish to get them down as much as possible.

It's normal to have high nitrate, yes- not sure if mine's ever been that high though. I would test tap water to be sure, the legal limit for drinking water is higher than the safe level for fish.

Just checked tap water and its 0ppm nitrAte.

Wow, zero! Lucky you :)

Well it may of been slightly above but it was def a yellow colour not orange.

Heres a video of my new fish :)

Oh, those little panda corys are so cute

Great tank! Those corys are mega cute

The tank still needs loads of work, namely plants, there is a few in there but needs quite a few more. However i've spent over £50 just on fish this week so plants will have to wait (i have just added a moss ball i picked up from a local dealer for £2 though )

Live plants are ace, they make the tank look beautiful, imo. I kitted out a 25l dwarf puffer tank with loads of live plants and it cost me almost 20 quid. Let's hope I manage to keep them (the plants) alive.

I've had to take the panda cory's back :( One got really bad fin rot and died in 2 days, then the others started looking like they were getting it so i took them back. Broke my heart but i couldn't watch another one die.

Was thinking of replacing with bronze or peppered corys as i think they are easier (and i know a private breeder who's tanks are immaculate and they're only £1 each, as he does it for the love of the hobby not for profit)

Love that rock in your tank zelda! Beautiful.