It has now cycled as well as it can without fish. So, off Don and I went to the local petsmart. Ours is unique in that the daytime lady actually knows a good bit about fish and what she doesnt know, she's not bashful about admitting. I like that.

One of the first questions was how long we had our tank running and what we
had done. She liked our answers as best possible for the area where the
frozen (has to be refridgerated) cycling stuff isnt sold. What we've done is the partly-fishless cycle where you get it as far as you can without access
to the better products (using just what you can get in bottles off a shelf). Then you carefully add just a few hardy fish of a type you plan to keep.

So here I am with my now dog-eard copy of 'What Fish? a Buyers guide to tropical fish' with all our notes in the corners.

Discussing with her our plans for the future and my husband's desires for several types that are all somewhat agressive, and matched to sizes, she convi nces me a gourami set is better for our needs than the zebra danio's. Main reason is 4 zebra danio's just wont make enough to cycle the tank for several weeks.

So, we have 4 dwarf gourami and 2 albino dwarf catfish, each will grow to 4-4 inches in time.

To this we plan to add 4 more gourami, 4-6 scizzortail rasbora, 2 spotted
dwarf catfish, some harlequin rasbora, glass fish, and then a fancy few.

For the fancy few, we are looking at angel fish, discus (pompadour), and
silver dollars. Not all of them of course, but thats the general idea.

xxcarol


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