In the morning I did check the water conditions. Looks like the CO2 did its job and pH is in reasonable 7.2 range. I checked other parameters and everything looks fine for a fresh aquarium setup. The water was treated yesterday and active coal removed all the bad stuff from the water which means that it was OK to start the biological filter cycle. How it works: the dead plants and fish waste as well as unused food produce ammonia. This ammonia is harmful to fish, but there are bacterias that like this stuff and produces from it nitrite (bacteria genus Nitrosomonas). Now, high levels of nitrite is also bad for fish but here comes next bacteria to play and by feeding it with nitrite you will get nitrate (bacteria genus Nitrospira). Nitrate is not that toxic and you may have much higher levels of this in your aquarium. By changing part of your water once in a week or two you may control amount of the nitrate easily. This is so called nitrogen cycle.
To start the cycle you may rely on your heavy planted aquarium or use limited amount of fish (around one small fish per 40L). The fish should be hardy so that the not great environment will not harm them. I've chosen to go with my proved method and I went to local shop in Drachten (Jumper) to see what they have there. To my surprise they had exactly the fish I wanted to keep in my aquarium as they complement the plants and roots. This way I got six Harlequin rasbora. Those are lovely, hardy fish. After few hours they looked very interested in the environment and the look of them all swimming together is really nice.
Cheers,
Marcin
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