How many fish to cycle a 100g?

[ptadam22]

Just set up my new 100 gallon Saturday for my belated birthday party bbq with friends. Worked my ass off to paint it and get it set up in time to show it off to a bunch of people that don't really care ha! Right now there are 2 small cichlids that are about 2", 3 rasboras, and 4 white clouds. Are these enough fish to effectively cycle the tank? I don't really want to buy bacteria to put in and know I can do it this way. It is being filtered by a single marineland c360 canister filter. I was able to put a little substrate from my small established tank in to help jump start it.

What do people normally do for hoods for large tanks. My 5 ft long tank has 3 pieces of glass that cover the 3/4 of the top and 24" light to cover the open spot. The glass pieces don't even fit that well and I'd like to get something nicer looking and with a light to span the length of the aquarium.

Pictures - decorating is a work in progress, seachem's flourite substrate made the water cloudy and looks a lot better now.

 

[tellemuno]

u could uses flake food 2 cyc ur tank n sted of putting ur fish thru that.

 

[richierichdollar]

nice start they will help cycle the tank. since u have another tank take some media from the filter and but it in the new filter will help even more and start bacteria on the new filter faster. Do water changes everyday untill tank is cycled so the fish wont die and u will need more filtration as u stock more u are currently at 5x filtration

 

[Toby_H]

I generally do not promote cycling with fish. Any detectable ammonia reading for any duration of time will impact your fish. Just because it doesn't kill them doesn't mean it's not having a negative effect.


If you choose to do so anyway, I suggest water changing as needed to keep the ammonia reading no higher than 0.5 ppm.


Any amount of fish will produce ammonia and the more fish you use the more ammonia you will have (thus the more water changes you will need to do). So your very light stocking is a good approach.


Keep in mind that once the tank is "fully cycled" you will only have enough bactyeria to accomodate the fish currently in the tank. As you add more fish you will need to allow more bacteria to develop. Thus add fish slowly and only a few at a time.