Day 10

Good evening all, hope everyone is well.

Today is day 10 of my cycle and I think that with my current stock levels the tank cycle has settled. The current situation is that the tank has now been running for 11 days and 10 days with fish. I have been monitoring it every day with a liquid test kit and in the last three days the results appear to have settled. I have completed 4 partial water changes in the last 10 days of about 20%. The current results are this Ammonia reads 0, Nitrate is 5 and Nitrite is less than 0.1. They have read very similar for the last 4 days.

Therefore my plan to progress is to add another two danios to bring the pair I currently have up to more of a school and increase the bio load slightly. As I am doing a fish in cycle the source of ammonia are the fish and their waste to I intend to add two more later this week. The reason I’m waiting slightly is to allow the bacteria that is present to mature slightly, hopefully allowing the increase in fish to be easier and less stressful for the fish.

However, I have been considering my stocking slightly more as I am considering more fish. I have decided that I shall be looking at danios still as I need to increase their school. There are a number of species within the Danios and I understand that they will all school so for variety I am a planning on looking for two leopard danios to accompany my zebra danios.

I have also been looking into more scaping of the tank. I really need another plant but want a larger one to help hide the heater, but I am considering a real plant. My only real hesitation is the fear is snails and their eggs on the plant. However, having researched it many people have suggested that snails will aid the tank. This is something that I will carry on considering.

Will next blog once I have the new fish or unless something dramatic changes before. Enjoy.