Adding Fish To A Cycled Tank

I finally finished my fishless cycle after nearly fifty days, and added my first fish this weekend. Hurray!

I was hoping to buy six Black Ruby Barbs and six Kuhli Loaches to go with the six Green Tiger Barbs I now have (which are great, btw). But my local MA advised adding the fish six at a time. I'm a bit worried I don't have enough fish to retain my bacteria, and effectively I will be doing a fish in cycle, which I went to a lot of trouble to avoid.

What do people think? There are a few other shops nearby, so I could go to one of them.

I'm with Richard on this - bacteria didn't get to rule the world by dying immediately something went wrong.

I'd also keep a close eye on your tiger barbs and make sure they play nicely with your new additions. They have a reputation as nippy, but his is OK as long as there are enough of them to establish their pecking order between them. However; everybody's idea of 'enough' seems to be different and seems to be anywhere from 6 to 10.

I'd love to see photos and hear how you get on. My plan for my next tank (once we've moved house) is based around Tiger Barbs and Ruby Barbs.

Keep tight hold of that towel.... it's worth it!

A teaspoon or so of good garden soil in the filter would be just as good. The bacteria are everywhere - except in tap water, which is why starting with a clean tank and tap water takes so long to get going.

Thanks all. I think I’ll stick to my local MA, but I’ll go in mid-week and hope they don’t remember exactly when I was last there   

Hi Aquamaid, I am quite patient and extremely stubborn, so probably would have waited 500 days if necessary  . I suppose there is a point when it makes sense to change tack if it is not working. But I was happy I stuck with it. It feels like a job well done, and you do see a few threads where people’s fish are struggling a bit with fish-in cycling.

It didn’t go entirely smoothly for me. I had to go away for work for a few days when I was near the end, and doing daily tests. When I got back the ammonia was not dropping as fast, so I went back to a partial dose. I lost a week, but did get back on track.

Two other things I noticed in case they help anyone else:
-   I bought some ammonia from Homebase. It said it was 9.5%, but unless there was a chemical reaction I have not thought of, it was actually a fair bit stronger, and I needed to use quite a bit less than the maths said.
-   I had a lot of trouble with algae, it killed some Tiger Lily’s and left everything else looking a bit mangy. I probably wouldn’t put the plants in until I got to the mid-point of the cycle next time. I probably made a mistake putting in some fertiliser balls at the start on the advice of my lfs too, since I think they were feeding the algae more than the plants - particularly in the diatom phase.

Thanks for the interest in my Barbs Colin, I’ll share my experience in a new thread.