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Update: skipped the cherry shrimp because pH was a little low, so we went with three endlers and some crushed coral. Shrimp coming soon, hopefully!

Happy to inform that we've been through an ammonia spike that's converted to nitrite and then nitrate and now all are absent. And we have substantial plant growth from the val and octopus plant. Added a mystery snail a few days ago, and we're probably on our way to get a trio of endlers and maybe also a couple of cherry shrimp this afternoon. Thanks all for the help. For anyone interested in a little data, here are a couple of charts from the past two weeks. Did two 25% water changes, and some days have two tests.

Thanks, super helpful. I hadn't seen this one yet.

I used two 8oz bottle over the past week (6 oz up front, and then 2oz every other day or so after that). Will the cyclops food generate ammonia? What weirds me out is that I haven't detected any yet (nor Nitrites or Nitrates).

So we set up and started running the pump on a Flex15 seven days ago, followed by a trip down to the Aquarium Co-op store to get the rest of our supplies. So far, we've added: A hair shy of two bags of active flora substrate Pogostemon (octopus plant) Water lettuce Moneywart One other dark green grass plant as a grab bag whose name I can't recall A handful of water lettuces 16oz of Fritzyme (over the last week) 30 drops of Fritz water conditioned/dechlorifier 15 gals of tap water with no chlorine, 6.8 pH and low KH buffer (around 40ppm) On Monday and then again on Tuesday we added a half cube (so around 5g) of frozen cyclops fish food, and we're testing water every day. We're also testing water every day, and I'm getting the following numbers yesterday (24 hrs after first 5g of cyclops) and today (48 hrs after first 5g cyclops, 48 hrs after second 5g of cyclops): Ammonia: 0 ppm Nitrite: 0 ppm Nitrate: 0 ppm Hardness (GH): 75 ppm Buffer (KH): between 40 and 60 ppm pH: 6.8 Chlorine: 0 ppm Water temp: 70°F My question is whether this seems right and on track to be considered "cycled," or if it should take more time for the 5g cyclops/day to actual convert to ammonia to see if the cycle is in fact started. I also think that running at 70° shouldn't be a problem for establishing the nitrogen cycle, but maybe we need to hold off to confirm until we get a heater? Our four year old is super excited to get some fish, but we don't want to rush them into a stressful environment.

Hi all, New to the forum and to the hobby, and we're getting our "feet wet" with a 15gal Flex15 and the rest of the kit from Aquarium Co-op in Edmonds. Feeling lucky to be local to what seems to be one of the best freshwater stores out there.