simtu said:
Hi all
New to aquariums (had a 2foot about 13yrs ago) and i have just finished setting up my new 6x2x2 tank. I have a aquaone canister filter plus a fluval 4 internal filter running,2 300watt heaters and have added plants,drift wood and slate.
I filled it up with water yesterday and added CYCLE, i also added some filter media and plants out of a mature tank.
My question is, What do i now have to test for and do before i can add any fish, i will be putting south american cihclids in it (i know they like to dig up plants)
Cheers any help would be very appreciated
Well, first of all, oncgrats on getting back into fish, and also allow me a moment to get over my jealousy of such a wonderful tank. Now, I feel better. So, to the issues at hand. Right out of tha gate I am going to tell you to stop using Cycle. Cycle does not speed up your cycle. It uses the wrong bacteria that we are trying to grow in a cycle and eats ammonia, which is the primary food source of the bacteria we
are trying to grow to act as our biological filter. Cycle actually slows down your cycle, as counterintuitive as that sounds, there it is.
I really recommend that you read the Sticky threads at the top of this forum. All have pricelss information on things a budding aquarist should not just know, but really be somewhat familiar with. There is a thread titled, Sticky:Cycle that is most important. It explains the process of cycling a tank. Also, do a Google search for fishless cycling and you'll get some various links to sites that explain the exact method to use. For a quick and dirty version, I'll sum it up here: You need pure ammonia. You add it to your tank to reach the desired level (usually 5 ppm [parts per million]) and then, using a test kit for ammonia, test for ammonia every day. When ammonia levels drop, dose enough ammonia to get the tank back to 3-4 ppm. Soon, you'll notice you have to start dosing every day. At this point, start testing for nitrites. You should see them in pretty large numbers. Keep testing ammonia everyday and nitrite everyday. Eventually nitrite starts going down at which point you begin to test for nitrate. You should see them and once they reach around 10-20 ppm, you're pretty much there. You'd do a large water change (in the realm of 90% or more, depending on which method or version of fishless cycling you stumbled upon) and then fill the tank back up, go buy your
full bio-load of fish and acclimate them slowly and eventually release them into your tank. That's a very quick and dirty, so forgive me.
The major advantage, as you may have seen, is that any fish you buy are not exposed to dangerous chemicals in great quantity. So, you are not harming your fish are reducing their lifespans. The other major bonus is that after a fishless cycle, you can add all of your fish at once. If you choose to fishy cycle, you can only make additions 2-4 at a time and only every 2-4 weeks. In a big tank like yours, you are left looking at a mostly barren tank for much longer than you would if you had simply fishless cycled. The last great advantage I can think of is the fact that during a fishy cycle you are forced to do lots of water changes. That can get very tedious after weeks or months. As you may have noticed, in fishless cycling you can have as few as one water change. Woohoo! On a big tank like yours, that's a huge plus.
You do have another option for cycling your tank, since you mentioned you will have plants. If you plant heavily and have a large plant mass, you can literally skip the cycle, because there are enough plants to eat up the ammonia. As a newb, I would've been hard pressed to figure out how many plants it would take to do this. I don't really recommend it to bginners, because if you screw up, get over anxious etc. you end up fishy cycling, and where's the fun in that? Add to this since you are doing SA Cichlids, the plant mass may be significantly reduced over time, so probably not the best route, but something to keep in mind none the less, if you end up with multiple tank syndrome down the road.
I hope that at least gave you a jumping off point for cycling information and i you have any more questions, post them! That's what AC is for. Most of all, have fun. That's what fish are supposed to be.
. In the meantime, read the stickys as Harlock suggested, and you'll refresh your memory on all this fish stuff and see where you're at, and what you want/need to do next 
