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I just bought a 90 gallon and was wondering how many zebra danios I should use to cycle it. I currently have 3 in there. Before adding them, I also added a cup of gravel from my well-established 10 gallon. Thanks for any help.

-Danimal

You could add a whole school of them. I would say at least 10 zebra danios.

HTH

Even if you add 10 danios, you will still need to slowly stock the rest of the tank. Now matter how long you have just the danios in that tank, as soon as you add more fish, the bacteria colony will need to grow larger to handle the new fish. If you plan on adding all your fish at one time, there are a couple ways to go about that. First, and probably the most approved way, is to do a fish-less cycle. The second way is to put in enough goldfish(or any other cheap, hardy fish) to fully cycle the tank, then return the goldfish, and then fully stock your tank with the fish you really want.

[span class="edited"][Edited by T/A 2004-08-14 15:12][/span]

I only have 6 danios so I put them in there.

How many common goldfish would be enough to cycle the tank fully? I would tank the danios out and turn off the heater before adding them.

[span class="edited"][Edited by fishnewbie 2004-08-14 18:42][/span]

use fishless cycle. no fish get hurt

well I cant find any bio-spira... the people at the LFS said that they stopped making it.

I'm not positive how many goldfish you would need. It depends on the size of the goldfish. If you were to get 6 small(2"-3" common(feeder) goldfish, I think that should be enough. Feed plenty and the waste production will be high, thus making the bacteria colony grow large enough.


You don't NEED Bio-Spira to do a fish-less cycle. You could use NIC(New Improved Cycle). If your local stores don't carry NIC, there are many companies online that sell it. Do a search and you'll find them.

[span class="edited"][Edited by T/A 2004-08-15 15:59][/span]