Cycling

ruby716

Hey,

My friend just got a 15 gallon tank and is cycling it with a few danios... Question is, she wants to know how many water changes she should do since there will obviously be ammonia in the water since the good bacteria didnt build yet. She's had it running for a week and the highest the ammonia went is 1ppm, and she does 30-40% water changes daily and uses prime and stability (seachem). I dont really know the answer to this question, so I told her I would ask the pros! :) I recommended doing small water changes daily or 40% every other day just to dilute the ammonia. Also, she doesn't know if she should clean the gravel with the water changes, or wait until the tank is fully cycled and then start cleaning the gravel once a month... Is once a month enough? I told her to sign up to this forum and she said she was going to but i figured I would post this asap, thanks guys!

justinianobrenden

idk about the water changed now, when i cycled mine i had a bacteria suplament that helped it cycle faster and i only did a 50% everyweekend for a month then i just went to doing a 25% once a week and then i clean the gravel once a month with my 50% os like week 1 after cycled: Sunday 25%
week 2: sunday 25% week 3 sunday: 25% week 4 sunday: 50% and gravel

Byron

Daily partial water changes of half the tank water using Prime are recommended if the ammonia reads more than .25 ppm in the morning. Same when nitrite begins to spike.

Ammonia at 1 ppm is going to cause damage to the fish; some can be killed, and plants too, by this level. Danio are pretty hardy, but internally is the problem. Fish may live through a cycling, but down the road develop health issues and early death as a direct result.

Live plants, even some stem plants floating, will help. And using a bacterial supplement like Seachem's Stability or Tetra's Safe Start. These two are 100% live bacteria.

Byron.