New tropical tank setup

I'm finally getting my 46 bow set up. It's crusted with hard water stains and I'm thinking about getting a new lid. But some of the fish I'm thinking about are more sensitive to light intensity (discus) so maybe the crudded up lid blocking some light is a good thing.

Anyway, the silicone held, and there are now no leaks. The only water I'm using (and have ever used in a tank) is tap water with the Stress Coat added. So I got the water in, checked for leaks, and put in the undergravel filter next. This order is kind of stupid, but I didn't want a repeat of last time. So with the filter hooked up the rocks were put in. For thin initial cycle I am impatient and was looking for a way to jump start the process. Lucky for me others are impatient too! The online ordering for PetSmart has a bottle of nitrifying bacteria called SuperBac, and people in the forums swore by it. They apparently don't have it in there actual stores, so I got a brand called Cycle (not preferred by the people in the forums).

So on Day 0 I put in 30 mL of the bacteria, put in some food to rot, and turned on the power head. I also tested pH, hardness, nitrate/ite and ammonia, but I don't remember those numbers (I don't usually test the water, and my fishes have always been fine).

On Day 1 I think the tank looks a little cloudy, as if the cycle is starting already. On this day I inserted a plastic mesh in the middle of the gravel so that if I get cichlids again they won't dig all the way to the filter. I used just a plastic screen (like what goes on a window or screen door), cut it to size, and cut out holes for the blanks and the uplift tube on the filter. Since all the gravel was in the tank already, I could only do half at a time, so I pushed all the gravel to one side of the tank. I left a thin layer of gravel over the filter so that I could not see it anywhere through the gravel (thinner spots in the gravel means all the suction is happening all at that point. You want it spread out over as much of the grid as possible.) So, then the screen went down, and shoveled the gravel back to that side, on top of the screen. I did the same thing on the other side, trying to get a thin, even layer covering the filter. Now that the screen is in there, I put some ornaments in. I thought that since they weren't cleaned very well from the last tank, they could help get with cycling.


It's Day 2 and I think the water looks about the same as it did yesterday. I've been keeping the light on during the schedule I would if there were fish, because algae likes light, and I want things to start growing in there. I am going to go to the store and get some real plants. I haven't had real plants before, so this will be interesting. I don't want to replace all the plastic ones, I just want the natural aspect to help with filtration and fish health. I bet once I see how good the real plants looks I'll ditch the plastic ones. Also, because I have the undergravel filter in, I'll need to keep the plants in pots. And my substrate is the regular sized gravel which may be too coarse for plants.