We gave our son his aquarium on his birthday at the beginning of Sept. It's been 3 weeks since we put water, plants (mostly live, 1 fake) and decor (a pirate ship) in it. It's been 2 weeks since we put fish in it. He chose 2 long finned gold danios. They are really fun fish. They swim all over the place and come over to "greet" us when we watch them. They also like to come around our hands when we're fixing something in the tank... like moving a plant.

But I have a couple questions.

1. With just the 2 fish in a 12 gal tank, it's taking forever to cycle the tank. In the 2 weeks they've been in there, the ammonia is only at .25ppm and the nitrite has not moved from 0. The nitrates has always been at 5 ppm. Is there something we can do to help cycle it more quickly? My son does want to put some neon tetras in it, but we were told to wait until the tank is mature. Plus the place where we buy them has them in RO water, so we were told we need to do a water change and get our tank at least to half RO half tap before we can acclimate them to our tank. We want to get the tank mature first though.

2. Last week we started seeing some yellowish-brownish stuff on the inside front of the tank. I'm assuming this is algae. We use the little sponge thing on a handle to scrub it away when we see it, but it starts to grow back and need more cleaning within a couple days. It is also growing on the fabric sails of the pirate ship and I don't think I can remove it from that. Is there anything else we can do to prevent this growth? Do we need to get an algae eater already? What would go well with danios and neons in a 12 gal tank? snails? shrimp?

ETA: We did just add a heater in the tank about a week ago as the water was getting colder with the colder weather. We keep it set at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The algae growth was a factor before we put in the heater, but might be a little more so since the water temp is a constant 70 now.

Thanks for the help!

2 fish in a 12g tank is good during the cycle. The ammonia is probably low due to you having the plants in there, as the plants will consume the ammonia. Your tank will cycle, but if the plants are doing their job, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Your tank will only be good for 2-3 more fish anyway. How many plants and what type are in there?

The brown algae is normal for new tanks. I clean my glass on all of my tanks every week, regardless. You will need to do the same for a while. No, you don't "need" an algae eater,

So will the brown algae eventually stop growing so fast after the tank matures? We've set up a routine for my son to do his tank maintenance every weekend, so it will be cleaned weekly, but we cleaned it this weekend and I just went in there this morning to clean it again because it was just as bad as it was on Saturday before we cleaned it.

There are like 8 small live plants and 1 large fake plant in the tank, but I think some of the live ones are not doing very well and will need to be replaced with something that doesn't require as much light. The guy at petsmart said they would do fine, but they are slowly dying. Every weekend we remove the rotting parts. The anubias and amazon sword (i think that's the other one we got) are doing well though.

Here's a pic of it after I scrubbed the front clean. The fish took off to hide when I went in. That's a first! They are usually so social and fun to watch when I go in to check on them. Maybe the camera freaked them out.

The abundance brown algae (diatoms) will subside over time. It may never go away completely, but will reduce. It feeds off the silicates on your glass, in your water, etc.

Those plants should do well with low light. Make sure the kelvin rating of the bulb is in the right spectrum. Should be 6500k-10000k and it may need to be on at least 8hrs, possibly longer. What type of light and how many watts is the bulb?

Danios are schooling fish so should really be kept in a school of 6, then your tank will be fully stocked. If you try to keep only two they will start picking on each other or other fish. You could have a snail as well maybe.

Danios are tough fish and very lively, and I agree with snail that they are schooling fish. You could probably add 2 more to speed up your tank's cycling. Congrats on doing things right the first time around.

In a 12 gallon as far as a cleanup crew I would suggest a few bigger shrimp like Amano shrimp or Ghost shrimp, and a nerite snail like snail suggested. The shrimp eat all kinds of algae and other waste like uneaten food, are very docile, and are very cool to watch. The two problems with shrimp are they are very sensitive to water parameters and since they are so docile they are very timid. The nerite snail won't breed (though it will lay eggs, they just need salt water to hatch). So if you're going to add a cleanup crew, I would wait until your tank has established a solid nitrogen cycle.

__________________
Officially fishless until after the move....tune in later for details!

Your plants may not be dying. Usually when a plant is moved to a new tank, it goes into a period of 'shock' where most or all of it's leaves turn brown and fall off. Then, new leaves, (that may or may not look slightly different from the original ones) will grow. It's getting used to your tank parameters.

And I agree with the above posters. A 12g tank will only be able to hold 3-4 more fish, and since you already have the Gold Danios, I'd suggest getting 3-4 Gold Danios once the cycle is over (since they are schooling fish and need 6+ to be happy.) You could get by with 5 if that's all the tank can handle.

Good luck and keep us posted.

__________________
20g Heavily Planted http://www.aquariumforum.com/gallery...00&ppuser=8981
36g Bow Front Heavily Planted http://www.aquariumforum.com/gallery...00&ppuser=8981