Question about planted aquarium and fishless cycling

From the sound of it, the live bacteria product you used must have quickly converted all of the ammonia to nitrate. I hope they have the correct type of live bacteria. Because there are bogus products out there with land based bacteria which will make it look like the tank is cycled but they eventually drown in the water after a few weeks and the cycle dies with them. If the product has the right type of bacteria, then your aquarium is already cycled.


One thing you need to know, we should not mess with water PH. Let it be. The only thing you could do is to do partial water change. It is also weird that your water PH actually had gone up. Usually the water PH goes down as more nitrate is produced from ammonia. Then again, you have well water so it must have a lot of minerals in it to have strong buffer against PH swing.

Whatever you do, do (not) use any chemical product to change the PH. It will only cause problem.

Fish and plants can get used to the PH if given time. Sudden change can kill them.