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What to Do Now??

213 Views 3 Replies 3 Participants Last post by  jahrad312, 
J
Greetings,

I need some guidance. I have a 90gallon Cichlid tank that has just ended its cycle. Water is crystal clear, Ammonia =0, Nitrite =0 and Nitrate =0 and fish are extremely happy. I pulled a rookie move and stocked the **** out of my tank before it even began to cycle. With a lot of praying, yelling at the wife and kids about not feeding, touching or even looking at the tank(not really), I didn’t lose any fish. They were stressed as ****, but no one perished.

So now that the cycling process is complete, what type of maintenance should I perform on the tank? As I noted, it’s a 90gallon freshwater tank, drilled with a Sump below with Bioballs. I know during the cycling process that a vast amount of food, fish poo, etc gathered under the gravel. Do I clean under the gravel to remove these items? I am not sure if this will hurt the beneficial bacterium that has grown. I have a carbon filter pad currently in the sump tray that’s pretty filthy; can I rinse that out in some of the aquarium water? Also, when and how often do I clean my Bioballs? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[/img]Thanks
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F
One bit of advise I can give you is Nitrates should never be zero in a cycled tank. How are you testing the water.
As far as your questions:
1. You can vacuum your gravel, I would do 25-30% at each water change(divide tank into quarters and vacuum one quarter each WC)
2. You can rinse out the filter in aquarium water but not on the same day as your water change(To avoid a mini cycle)
3. Not sure about the Bioballs.

The very first thing I would do is figure out why your getting a zero nitrate reading.
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firemedic1169 said:
One bit of advise I can give you is Nitrates should never be zero in a cycled tank. How are you testing the water.>snip<.
Click to expand...
^^This

Are you using nitrAte removing compounds or heavily planted tank?
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J
Please forgive me, it was suppose to be Nitrate=10 not Nitrate=0. Thanks for your answers. That helps me out a ton. :thumb:
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