"Lisa" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hello,

I set up my new 50-gallon bow-front 2 weeks ago. 8 days ago, I bought
2 Flame dwarf gouramis to begin the cycle. As far as I can tell, they
have been happy, eating, active, and making bubble nests all over for
the past week.

The water seems clear. (I added Bio-Spira after the fish had been in
the tank for 2 days or so - it was the first chance I had to actually
find it in stock at the LFS.)
snip

Hi Lisa,

I have acquired two male Honey Gouramis as well One bigger than the
other. I'll get 4 females when the LFS gets new stock out of quarantine.

I'm responding because my tank never spiked, but my experience was slightly
different;

I seeded it with sponge squeezings and the whole filter from the old tank
and then left it for two days. Then I added the fish, 6 at a time over 3
days from the old tank.

I tested and tested, and it's been 4 weeks now and I have yet to see any
spikes.

I consider myself lucky/fortunate and even more so the 18 Tetra, 2 Gourami,
and 2 Mystery Snails.

I've just started injecting CO2 too which has dropped the pH from 7.8 to
7.3, which is sounding good to me.

I have a had a lucky/good run with this new tank so far.

I do have a document I got from the internet some time ago which gives
advice about seeding using old filters and the such and he claimed in that
there were no evident spikes - I followed this advice and it worked!

It's worth mentioning that I am pretty scrupulous about water changing (25%
at least once per week) and not over-feeding. I have a medium amount of
plants and a pretty light fish load for the size of the tank.

Experiences with cycling seem to vary dependent on many variable parameters,
so I think it's safe to state YMMV

Regards,

Oz

--
My Aquatic web Blog is at http://members.optusnet.com.au/ivan.smith