Fixing up the 10 gallon

newbie trying to learn here folks - if I do a fishless cycle I put the water in, feed, then no water changes until I see nitrates and am ready to stock right ? so no need to condition water until then or no ?
 
yes you do need to condition
 
Coler said:
do you mean after the last water change before adding fish ?
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What I mean is that if you put chlorinated water in your tank you are going to have a die off of your bacteria. So if at anytime you have bacteria in the tank and you put chlorine in the water, you would risk killing the bacteria.
 
but for a fishless cycle no water changes needed, right ? until the big wc before adding fish,and ?

edit - and on that last one, dechlorinate ?

and of course every wc afterwards
 
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I believe so.
 
I think there is some confusion here. Yes, you need conditioner the first time you add water. If you do not add the conditioner, your tank will not cycle because the chlorine will kill off any bacteria.
 
dvd_wightman said:
Can I use Prime for cycling, because that is the water conditioner I have, but I know it gets rid of ammonia and nitrites.
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Yes. Use prime when you first fill the tank. Then put in your ammonia source of choice (fish food, pure bottled, whatever) then monitor your ammonia, nitrites and nitrates on a regular basis. You will need to keep dosing ammonia periodically, I believe the recommendation is to keep it at 5.0ppm, and you'll know you're cycled when you put 5ppm of ammonia in the tank in the morning and it's gone and there are no nitrItes (there will be nitrAtes) the next day. Once that happens, you do your 90% WC, fill with water that has been treated with prime, and you can then add fish and do regular WC's as per usual.

You do not need to do any water changes (or add any more prime) between the original filling of the tank and the 90% water change when you're done.
 
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