Fishless Cycling Problem

Be patient, the fish will find a way to obtain the food when they are hungry.
You'll probably find no trace of the feeding stick by tomorrow morning, and just have a tank of slightly rotund but contented fish doing the equivalent of laying on the sofa with their trousers unbuttoned. 

If your just away for a few days that sounds like the best option to me, though flake in autofeeders is renounced for going soggy and no longer dispensing/going off. That said if its only a couple of days the fish should be fine without food for that length of time...

Sorry to hear about your losses.
I would do a water change. If you are using the prime as your water conditioner as well then that will also help.

I've forgotten  do you have many plants or other decor? I know you intended fake plants, which is fine as long as you have a few of them not just one or two. The most common reasons for fish hiding are that they don't like the water, they don't like their tank mates (usually timid fish sharing a tank with aggressive fish) or that they don't have enough hiding places. Fish that have plenty of hiding places know there is somewhere to run to if a predator comes along so they come out more. (Fish don't know they are in a tank and are safe from predators  )

In my tank it is the rasboras that hide, but I have hengels rasboras not harlequins.
Harlequins are often cited as being slow swimming peaceful fish and black phantoms as being more outgoing. I would expect it to be the harlequins that hide from the phantoms. But fish don't read fish books......

I have 2 Rasbora left now and 7 Phantoms. The pipe from the filter is pointing toward the surface of the tank, I could try and redirect it and see what happens. They are at bottom of tank near the filter, so would say the current would be less there. I cant adjust the flow rate.

Have redirected the water flow, still got surface agitation but directed against glass more, hopefully that might help.

Yes, neons should be added later. They are delicate fish nowadays so I would wait until the tank is running with no problems.


Sponges should be squeezed gently in old tank water. You need to remove any brown goo on the surface but not squeeze them so hard that you dislodge the biofilm. There shouldn't be too much goo as the white pad is there to stop bits of debris reaching the sponges (in theory).
I've always found that blue sponges turn a sort of purple colour. In my tanks they never went blue again after washing.

I wouldn't. There must be a reason why they are hiding behind the bush and moving it will cause them stress.


Do they rush and hide behind it when they see movement outside the tank or are they there all the time? The way to find out is to sit away from the tank but close enough to see what the fish are doing, and keep still for a while, perhaps as long as half an hour, so they forget you are there. Then they will behave normally.
Fish don't behave normally if they see movement which they interpret as something coming to get them, or they see you and assume they are about to be fed. In the case of your fish it doesn't sound like the latter so you need to find out if they are just hiding from the perceived threat of something moving outside the tank.

Fish still hiding, not sure what else to do. Removed the back picture today to see if that helped, seem a very little more out, maybe over next few days they might come out.

I am getting to the end of my ammonia test kit, can it sometimes throw up strange readings?