Finally the day is here!!!!

[qguy]

With water changes and the size of tank I think all will be well ...plus the fish are still small

 

[Lambrakopoulos]

Cycling my new 225g took a while even with a good filter. I hope you got a plan. Be prepared for it to go cloudy like overnight and WC won't help. Good luck.

Umm, How long have the fish been in the tank? I never cycled a tank as large as a 900 gallon before but the bigger the tank, I'd say the longer the cycle will take. I'm going to educate you because I think you are a little blinded by being inexperienced by your response and I am here to help others and spread knowledge. Cycling a tank normal takes approximately a month to a month and a half. Your fish have only been in the tank for a day or two, that is why you are not seeing any affects yet. First your ammonia levels will spike. Your ammonia levels will spike next week or the week after and ammonia at these level are deadly. They will then drop and will be followed by extremely high nitrite levels. This will take place approximately the following week or week after. These levels are also extremely deadly to your fish. Your nitrites will drop and you will be left with the byproduct, nitrate. Fish can withstand reasonably low nitrate levels and this is why we do lots of big water changes to keep these under check. I like to keep my nitrates under 5-10 p.p.m's. 0 is ideal but good luck with that. The only time that ever happened for me was when I was running a 24 water changing system on top of scheduled water changes. Some will keep their fish in a max of 20 p.p.m.'s but this will have effect on your fish IMO. Not until both your ammonia and nitrite levels are 0 and your nitrates stop rising and level off do you do your first water change. Doing water changes prior to this are no good and will only make things worse and prolong the cycle. Take my advise and put the fish back in the tank that they came out of and properly cycle your tank before you kill all of your fish.

+1 , there's no way that tank is cycled and you risk losing some good fish.
Sent from my iPhone using MonsterAquariaNetwork app

I want to thank you guys for your concern, I tested my water myself today and got
pH 8.0
Ammonia 0
Nitrate 5ppm
Nitrite 0 ppm
I will test my water twice a day for the next to two weeks and post it here on this thread.

 

[Lambrakopoulos]

Best of luck!

*drum roll*

Thank you

 

[qguy]

Twice a day testing is IMHO too close. You could do with every 24 hours

 

[Lambrakopoulos]

Twice a day testing is IMHO too close. You could do with every 24 hours

If you say so.

 

[Flycaster]

Stunning looking fish.... If only we had the selection of cichla in this part of Australia.

What a great set up... You must be really proud of your efforts.

 

[Lambrakopoulos]

Stunning looking fish.... If only we had the selection of cichla in this part of Australia.
What a great set up... You must be really proud of your efforts.

To be honest all of the cichla I buy are from vendors on MFK or through a second party having to do with MFK. If you want to have beautiful cichla you should shoot Jeff Rapps an email. I speak for a lot of people when I say his fish are good quality and he's very good when it comes down to shipping. He just brought in some new cichla earlier this week or last week I don't remember.
Here his website: http://www.tangledupincichlids.com/

and thank you for the kind words, and it took years of saving $ to get this far.

 

[Lambrakopoulos]

Here are some updates I took late last night before feeding, I took advantage of them swimming up to the front begging for food like always... hope you enjoy.

And the darker colored cichla is the runt between the 3 xingu and I've never had a fish so stubborn when it comes to eating, I have to either feed him, shrimp or live. So i've been stuffing his shrimp with MP as of lately and I'm looking for some other ideas. I was thinking night crawlers since they're packed
with proteins?

Sorry for the crappy pics, I need to invest into a real camera, because these pictures don't do them justice.

 

[david yurik]

Twice a day testing is IMHO too close. You could do with every 24 hours

+1 on the testing. i think twice a day would be too frequent. i also worry about your cycle but hope things work out. they did for me using some seachem prime but those were on 125 and smaller tanks with community tetra types. i haven't seen the question asked yet but i am dying to know - how much does a tank that size run? it had to be well into the thousands!! was there another thread about it i missed somewhere?? again best of luck. can't wait to see the filtration. thanks for all the pics.

dave

 

[FuriousFish]

WOW! Nice Setup!