55g newbie questions

[tooldud]

My wife got the tank for X-mas from her mom. 55g, 2 @150 heaters, Emperor 400 bio filter. fake plants and such. I thought I had a problem at first with ammonia in the tap water (there was some) Well I brought a tank water sample to the LFS after tank had been running 3 days with the carbon filters that came with the filter, but no fish yet. He said my #'s looked fine to start a cycle going. The #'s are 75.5 degrees, ammoia .5ppm, nitrate 20ppm, nitrite 0, ph 7.2, water is soft, all this with my test strips. I bought 4 Zebra Danios and the food he recomended. It is 5 days now and the water had been cloudy is now clear. I have feed the fish every other day as told to. My ammonia is at 1.0ppm and the rest of the #'s are the same as before. The fish seem fine and they do move around a lot but, stay more on the hidden side. I hope I have given you enough info. So the question is, is everything okay? Someone told me 4 fish where not enough to cycle the 55g tank. I am not in a rush to stock it. I did not know about fish less cycling before I started the tank. I have not done any water changes yet. The LFS told me to wait till one week when I bring him back a water sample to test.I have read a lot on this forum since I found it and and am still a little confused weather or not I'm doing okay.

TIA

Tom

[Blinky]

Welcome to the hobby! Sounds like you're doing fine so far. IMHO, water changes would be a good idea at this point - you do need some ammonia in the tank to feed the beneficial bacteria, but not so much that it will harm the fish. Doing daily water changes can really help the fish, and won't hurt the cycling process. I've found that generally it takes 1-2 weeks to start seeing NO2 (nitrIte), and several weeks after that you'll begin to see NO3 (nitrAte) rise. If you've got 20ppm now, it sounds to me like you've got 20ppm NO3 in your tap water. If that's the case, keep that in mind when you're testing the NO3 levels to see where you are in the cycle - if you see levels higher than 20, you know that NO3 is being generated by beneficial bacteria in the tank.
The danios are enough to start the cycle - once both types of bacteria have established themselves in the filer media, you can slowly add fish to the tank. The bacterial population will increase slowly to accomodate a heavier bio-load. If you add too many fish at once, your tank will probably experience an ammonia and/or nitrite spike, and you'll need to go back to frequent water changes for a bit until things settle.
Cute tank, BTW! :D

[tooldud]

. If you've got 20ppm now, it sounds to me like you've got 20ppm NO3 in your tap water. If that's the case, keep that in mind when you're testing the NO3 levels to see where you are in the cycle - if you see levels higher than 20, you know that NO3 is being generated by beneficial bacteria in the tank.


Thanks I will test the tap water for a baseline number on the NO3.

[Harlock]

Yip, you're on the right track. I'll secon Blinky on water changes during the cycle. The beneficial bacteria grow on the filter media and gravel, not in the water column, so changing water just keeps those danios a bit happier. By the way, nice stand there on your webpage. People here are always interested in DIY stuff (especially the aforementioned Blinky). You might post more info about that in the DIY section here, if you want to share.