Hi guys.
I've read through this and about fifty articles, but I still don't quite understand.
I put a heap of wild fish in my tank and this was a few months ago, before I had read anything about cycling. They went in with some wild plants, store-bought gravel and a few store-bought ornaments, with a complete filter system. There were no deaths.
I put a bristlenose catfish and three guppies in the tank. The wild fish were not agressive with each other but they ate the guppies. I was horrified and evicted them unceremoniously from the aquarium. The catfish hid under a rock and wasn't touched. I left the aquarium basically alone with just the catfish in it for about two months because I was real busy then I decided to do something about it. I stuck the catfish in a jug and basically disembowelled the aquarium, replaced the filter wool but not any other of the filter media, scrubbed it all out with hot water and rinsed the gravel. I put the catfish back. It stayed there for about two weeks and then I put in one platy (Mum set some crazy ultimatum about room tidying and refused to let me get any more fish or I would have bought them all at once.)
About a week after that, the catfish and the platy are fine in there. Does this mean that my tank is cycling already? Most of the filter media is intact and that had been running for three or four months and I had introduced wild plants into the aquarium. Am I safe or do I need to do something before I stock my aquarium? (Planning on buying more platies and some tetras.)
I don't have ammonia available, or ammonia, nitrite or nitrate test kits. Live in small country town in Australia.
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