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Next steps for a newly cycled, planted tank.


cclements
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Hello, 

Thanks again for everyone's help with my KH questions. I removed the crushed coral and conditions have remained stable. PH around 7, KH around 2. About 70-80 percent of the plants I planted have survived and have transitioned/are transitioning. There are signs of new growth in my scarlet temple, pearlweed, monte carlo and a few of the crypts, and my various kinds of java fern are holding steady (some black spots on the windelov aside). There's also, what I believe to be diatom growing on my gravel, rocks, and some plants, as well as hair or thread algae on my driftwood and some of my plants. The tank has also read 0 for ammonia and nitrites and under 20ppm nitrates the past few days, so it seems like the tank is cycled. Hooray. 

My questions is... what do I do now? My goal is to have honey gourami and kuhli loaches. But I want to make sure the plants are established so the honey gourami's will be comfortable, and the kuhli loaches won't rip everything up/ be comfortable. And while I know the algae is a good sign, if it gets too out of control it will start blocking light for the plants/ be a complete pain to get rid of right? Particularly as I'm not planning on adding any specific algae eaters if I don't have to.

The light is on 8 hours a day currently, in a part of my basement that gets very little natural light (Nicrew at 4/5 brightness for white light and 3/5 for blue). I'm dosing one squirt of Easy Green a day as suggested in Cory's planted tank cycling video. There are three sprigs of pothos coming out of the top. And I'm planning on replacing the dead hornwort/one good sprig of hornwort with wisteria in the near future. since most of the hornwort seems dead/ it make a mess. Other than that I have no plans to add or remove any more plant stock any time soon.  

So, what's the next step if I want to continue to grow my plants and keep the algae at bay? Do I cut back on the hours I'm running the light for (I've been running it so long for the monte carlo and scarlet temple). Should I start dosing the easy green once a week with three squirts as recommended on the bottle? Do I need to go ahead and add some fish? Or should I keep going to see if the tank stabilizes itself as the plants grow?  

Thanks! 

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The general rule that I have heard is to let a fish tank sit for at least 2 weeks before adding fish. I would also recommend to wait two weeks before adding a different kind of fish. If you would rather wait longer to add fish there is no harm in that. If you do not want to get an Algae eater that is ok, you just may have to do more work with cleaning algae, which should be mangable and help it not get out of control more than algae eating fish might. I think it is really up to you what you do next with your new tank, adding fish or letting plants grow more. I would recommend lowering how much easy green is used (I do one pump a week) because while it helps the plants it also helps the algae grow too. It looks like you have a really nice tank set up and good luck with your next steps and getting fish. 

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Next step to me sounds like establishing your macro environment. Decide what you want to have in the tank whether it be snails, shrimp, daphnia, worms, etc. and add them in now. These guys will help stabilize the cycle with their excrement as well as clean up any unwanted debris. Allow them to establish themselves over the course of a week or two. You may have to feed them to keep them from eating new growth on the plants if they run out of algae.

 

As for the plants 8-10 hours is best I would not lower the amount of light output while they are growing. Keep doing your fertilizer regiment and pull hair algae off the plants and glass if you want. Some people, myself included like the look of established algae as long as it isn't competing with the plants. Not to mention many fish like to graze.

 

The longer the tank has to establish before fish the better, it just depends on how patient you want to be with it.

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Thank you both. I'll let it sit a longer before adding any fish, as I would really like to see plants the plants grow up a bit more. And try and clean as I go. Maybe get a couple Nerite snails. And maybe cut back on the easy green to every other day since there's so much dead plant matter still in the tank. 

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