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We couldn’t wait any longer. With ammonia at safe levels, we added our first livestock: three Nerite snails.

Twelve days in, and we got the news we’d been waiting for: ammonia is dropping!

We added a Tapo C120 camera to document the tank’s progress. Timed to sync with the aquarium lights.

Ten days in, and we’re starting to see the first real evidence that the nitrogen cycle is progressing. The numbers are moving in the right direction.

A full week since setup. The water is clear, the plants are settling in, and the nitrogen cycle is progressing exactly as expected.

The first two weeks of cycling brought stable parameters and growing plants. The silent cycle hypothesis is looking more likely with each test.

Three days of staring at a cloudy tank. Today we finally got to test the water, and the results were interesting.

While we wait for our tank to cycle, we’re obsessing over the most fun part of fishkeeping: choosing the fish.

The plants arrived. The soil was ready. Four hours of careful layering, planting, and water-adding transformed an empty tank into the beginning of an ecosystem.

The Walstad method demands heavy planting from day one. Here’s how we selected 41-47 plants for our underwater jungle.