Any fishkeepers here? Saltwater or freshwater

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by cabletech94

Need to let your water cycle for at least a week before you put fish in. Or your fish WILL DIE. (duh)

Actually the cycle won't START without ammonia (fish waste), so you need fish to even start the cycle.

For FW, I use mollies because they're very resilient. They'll usually live through the cycling process.

The cycling process often takes MUCH longer than a week. If you don't want the hassle of using a drip reagent test for Ammonia, get the 5-in-1 test strips to test for nitrite and nitrate.

At first, both values will be zero. Over a few days, the bacteria will begin to begin to convert ammonia to nitrite and you will start to see the nitrite pad change color. Eventually, a 2nd strain of the same bacteria will begin to convert nitrite to nitrate.

When the cycle is complete, nitrite should drop to zero and from then on you should only see nitrate on the test.