Adding Fish to Cycled Tank

[Dream157]

My fish tank is finally cycled and I'm ready to add fish. My ammonia is 0ppm, Nitrite is 0ppm and Nitrate is 10ppm (API master test kit). I already have an established 20 gallon tank with fish in it that I want to transfer to the newly cycled tank. My question is how many fish at a time should I add since I have schooling fish. The new tank is 40 gallons. I have the following fish in the 20 gallon.

6 White skirt tetras
4 Otocinclus catfish
12 Neon tetras

 

[Aiken Drum]

How much ammonia was you dosing and how quickly did that ammonia cycle out?

 

[Andy Sager]

My fish tank is finally cycled and I'm ready to add fish. My ammonia is 0ppm, Nitrite is 0ppm and Nitrate is 10ppm (API master test kit). I already have an established 20 gallon tank with fish in it that I want to transfer to the newly cycled tank. My question is how many fish at a time should I add since I have schooling fish. The new tank is 40 gallons. I have the following fish in the 20 gallon.

6 White skirt tetras
4 Otocinclus catfish
12 Neon tetras

Theoretically, if you move all the fish and filtering materials ( filter, pads, socks, etc) to the new tank, there should be no " recycling" of the aquarium. It's just like having the 20 only it's in the 40. From there, you can give it a few weeks for the nitrfying bacteria to also establish before removing the older filtering things if that is what you want to do. At that point, you still want to add new fish slowly. Always check ammonia levels when adding new fish to make sure you haven't stressed the system. Make sure you have something like PRIME at hand so that if you did stress the system, you can detoxify the ammonia until your bacteria bed catches up.
(An FYI: Nitrifying bacteria replicate rather quickly so the process should take more than a day or two . )
Hope this helps