Extremely Basic Questions in the Age of Conflicting Information

[native_plant_nelly]

Hi folks. I'm attempting to cycle a tank with plants in right now, and have two smaller tanks with fauna awaiting their newer, bigger stomping grounds. And I am learning that the premises I started from, in many cases, are so disagreed upon by various forums, companies, blogs, and so forth that I wanted to check with actual humans.

What are your GH and KH goals for planted tanks containing a variety of tropical fauna?

How do you cycle new tanks? (or how would you without borrowing an established filter from another tank?) How do you judge when they're done cycling?

And, because I'm thinking about it, how do you recommend injecting CO2 to beginners?

[halak]

In terms of cycling, set up the tank with substrate and plants, start the filter and light, and then you can add some fish food to get the bacteria growing. Then I'd wait a few days, maybe a week. Then I'd add one fish, then another the next day if the first one survived, and so on. I'd wait with shrimp for about a month.

I do recommend CO2 injection to beginners.

[native_plant_nelly]

Thanks Victor; that actually sounds way less lengthy and arduous than I've been worrying it might be. I'm on day 4 with most of the plants in. I just today got the test kit that actually measures ammonia and I'm letting some melt go un-cleaned-up, plus I added some lived-in fish water from my betta, to try and feed the bacteria. It's at a whopping 1 ppm of Ammonia today after a half-tank water change this morning, and if I see it start to go through the cycle (I'm testing every day for now), I'd love to start the big move.

I read to wait two weeks with plants in, or just until the plants start showing new growth - then I read two MONTHS somewhere else today. It would really be great to move an Endler or two in next week.

There are big hardness disparities between the little quarantine tanks and the big one, too - I'm guessing because the little tanks don't have Easy Green or Flourish tabs in them (I might even try adding a tiny bit of easy green to the little tanks so that the parameters get more similar before fauna moves). But the API 5-in-1 strip instructions basically say the danger zone for tropical fish begins, for GH, right in the middle of what Aquarium Co-op says is the ideal range (which starts right when API starts sounding alarms), and in general, no one agrees but no one talks about how some of it is guesswork or opinion, either, which undermines the authority of all the conflicting info sources - and gives me a headache.

[Cristy Keister]

Safe gh and kh varies for each fish species. However, most of the common aquarium fish are fine with whatever comes from the tap water here, if they are acclimated to it before they go in the tank. You would only run into a problem if something in the tank causes a sharp drop in gh/kh/ph.

What substrate are you using? Some of them will cause a temporary drop in hardness or spike in ammonia.

There's no need to wait to put any amount of plants in, it's the fish you have to worry about. A few plant types, like cryptocoryne, melt when they're moved to a new environment, no matter what the conditions. Also, some plants you get from a store are grown emersed and will lose leaves while converting to submersed form.