Adding fish after the cycle

[kdogg85]

Before I go and get any more fish, after the aquarium is cycled, can i add all my fish at once or do i have to add them a few every couple weeks. Yesterday, i bought 2 striped raphaels and a clown pleco. Is it safe to add the others right away.

 

[dkpate]

I would let the bacteria catch up with the bio-load of the new fish before you put more in there. Keep testing the ammonia and the 2 N's until they stabilize. Not sure how long you should wait, hopefully someone else will chime in in the next few hours.

 

[mfdrookie516]

alot of it depends on what size tank and how many fish youre going to put in. if youre getting a small tank and only adding 2 fish, it would probably be ok to put both in at once. If youre going with several fish, i would only get a couple a week, testing ammonia and nitrite regularly to make sure you dont mini cycle prior to adding any more

 

[kdogg85]

The tank is 75g. I thought that cycling the tank meant you could add most of if not all your fish at once.

 

[Blueiz]

Did you fishless cycle your tank?

Personally, even going this route, I would add half of my stock, keep an eye on ammonia and trites, then slowly add the rest. If you did fishless cycle your tank, the bioload you can add at one time will depend on how large of a bacteria colony you grew. If I remember correctly when fishless cycling you dose up to 5 ppm of ammonia and go off that amount to cycle the tank. Therefore if you add fish that create more than 5 ppm of ammonia it will be more than your fishless cycled bio filter can handle at one time and your tank will go into a mini cycle.

 

[mfdrookie516]

pretty much exactly what blueiz said... i run mine at 4ppm, but people do it differently. Personally, i wouldnt add more than 3-4 at a time (assuming they are small fish), its not worth risking it imo...

 

[kdogg85]

Oh ok, I thought the 5ppm ammonia was made out to be like putting the max load on the system. I want to add 6 angels, 4 blue rams, and 2 parrotfish after the 2 raphs and the pleco that I have already added. BTW, which should I add first, I want to add the most territorial ones last.

 

[dkpate]

I hope you mean 4-5 ppm during the fishless cycling. If you have fish in there, you should have 0 ammonia, and never more than .25 or you run the risk of all your fish dying.
Good luck!

 

[kdogg85]

Oh god no, I wouldn't do that with fish in there. What I was thinking was 4-5 ppm simulated a full biological load. Something else I've been pondering, say you don't cycle and add a couple of fish to start, would it be disasterous if you added an old filter pad and or substrate to introduce bacteria while the fish are there. Would that ease some of the ammonia and nitrite starting out and make it safer for the fish?

 

[Blueiz]

This is called seeding and is a great way to speed up the cycle of your tank. You can silently cycle your tank this way by stocking very slowly as well.

 

[kdogg85]

so it would be less harmful than just starting with fish from scratch. It took my tank 2 weeks to cycle but I had 2 pounds of established gravel and 8 dirty filter pads and sponges thrown in as well. I removed them one by one in 2 day intervals and kept the ammonia at 5 ppm. The day i added my first fish, I kept one dirty pad in the filter and removed it about 8 hours later. That made for an all night job. But so far my fish seem to be happy as a hog in mud. It's wild how much the hobby has changed since I was in it 6 years ago

 

[Blueiz]

I would leave the dirty filter pad -sponge-gravel, whichever is your choice, in the tank for several weeks to be sure the filter had an established bacteria colony in it.

But, yea.. it is less harmful and less work on you than starting from scratch with fish, and is much easier than waiting out a full lesscycle.

 

[kdogg85]

I'll throw a few pads back in, I threw everything else in a quarantine tank to get it going. But for the last two days since my fish were added , no ammonia or nitrites. One other thing, what kind of testing schedule would be good once the tank is fully populated. when all is said and done it will have 2 angels, 4 german blue rams, 10 serpae tetras, and maybe 2 discus.

 

[Blueiz]

Generally, after the tank is completely cycled ammonia and nitrite are tested for mainly when there is a problem with the tank and after adding new stock to check for a mini cycle. They are actually IMO, the first thing that needs to be tested for if you suspect a problem in your tank. NitrATES on the other hand should be tested on a regular basis until you are familiar with how they rise with your set up. Depending on your stock level, a regular basis could be weekly, biweekly, or monthly. I wouldn't go more than a month without checking the trates until you are familiar with your tank. Some ppl go off of the amount of nitrates to determine when and how much water to change. There are a lot of things that you cannot test for in your water that make up the total dissolved solids, so trates can be used as a guideline. Generally I try to keep my trates under 40. Some of the more sensitive fish do not appreciate trates as high as 40. With the exception of the discus, your stock list should do fine with trates @ or < 40. Remember as well, your tap water may have some trates in it as well, so you may want to get a base line reading on that.

A side note, before adding discus you will want to make sure your tank is fully mature (the same with teh german blue rams), and even then.. you may want to rethink the discus all together because of there high demands. They may not work well for you in a community set up. Of course, I have no direct experience with discus.

 

[kdogg85]

i was figuring 4-5 days(check everything) I know first hand about the discus, at first it will drive you nuts figuring how much water to change to try an keep equilibrium. After about a month, my tank seemed to line itself out and I changed 25% of water every week. The ones I had seemed pretty tough, they lived in 7.9 ph well water, with no treatment chemicals and still live to this day in a friends aquarium.

 

[dkpate]

My 75G only took 6-7 days to finish cycling with media from another established tank. I only have 2 fish in there though lol, not much bio-load!