Am I Ready For Fish?

[deonild]

I have been cycling my tank for about 25 days... I started, doing fishless cycle, and got ammonia to 5ppm. It took 5 days to lower to about 3ppm. I then at that time added T5 lighting, co2, and live plants (pH dropped from 7.8 to 7.4). The cycle stalled and ammonia didn't drop anymore below 3ppm. about 0.50 nitrite had shown at this time. For a week the co2 worked, then stopped and I didn't refill, the day after co2 stopped ammonia started dropping again and I was adding ammonia every day then. Now nitrite is staying constantly at 0 with me adding ammonia everyday and the ammonia getting to 0 within 6 hours. So it seems to me that my tank is truly cycled, I've had nitrite at 0 for 2 days, and ammonia dropping from 3ppm to 0 after 3-6 hours of adding some.

I have a fairly big grean algae problem. The T5 lights I got at a steal on ebay, came with saltwater actinic bulbs, not good for my freshwater setup. I hope when I soon get the right freshwater plant bulbs the algae will clear up. I have a huge net of grean algae, as well as my water being fairly hard to see through being green...

My question is, Can I add my fish, now that my cycle is done, with green algae water? And now get the right bulbs after the first half of fish added? Will the bit of algae be harmful to adding fish now in any way? It's not very bad, just very noticably green.

I've read one source that the green floating algae is no threat at all to fish, is that right?

-Deo

[MonkeyPox]

You should be safe to add a few fish, but don't try to stock it all at once.

The actinic lighting won't cause algae. How long are you leaving your lights on? Are you getting any sunlight?

[bocrayfish]

hmm maybe you could add some daphina they may clean up some of the algee and your fish will rid you of them in short order