Adding New Fish

[Osian]

I finished cycleing my tank saturday and got 10 ember tetras and 2 male guppies. There seem to be doing fine and swimming around not taking any notice of people passing the tank. The only thing is, as i mentioned on another thread is that one of the guppies picks on the other, so i was thinking of adding another 2 to try and even the agression out. The tank is a 60 liter (16 us gallon, 2 feet x 1 foot x 1 foot). What i wanted to know is would it be ok to add another 2 tonight or would it be better to wait a week? I thought of doing it tonight before the bacteria dies off from the cyle to cope with the current stock, or would it have died off already? It was cycleing 8ppm (it was easier to measure and time wasnt important) before i got the fish.

This morning the stats where :
0ppm Amonia
0ppm nitrite
10ppm for nitrate.
7.2 PH

 

[waterdrop]

some will probably fuss at you but to my eye seems a trivial decision and nothing wrong with adding them now -- your stats seem perfect and timing not bad -- you are probably not following the old dictum of adding the final bits of stock slowly but guppies don't seem the most sensitive to me and you are correct that your cycling process should have provided a nice big bio-filter at this point.

just my thoughts,
~~waterdrop~~

 

[doresy]

Hi, I see no problem in adding another couple of male guppies in your present situation. When you have newly added stock it is very common for a bit of early squabbling to occur. They are just getting the pecking order sorted. Adding a couple more may help or increase the problem but either way it will smooth its self out in a few days or so.

Your stats are perfect for a newly cycled tank (providing you experienced a nitrite spike) and I'm envious of your nitrate reading (I get 4 times that amount from the tap here )

 

[Osian]

Well last night the level of nitrate was under 5ppm, but it's 10ppm now, so last nights reading could have been wrong or does plants and such use it up? I didnt get a nitrite spike as such as i used a little piece of mature media, but during cycle the nitrite did come up to 0.5ppm and back down to 0 each time i added ammonia, and as i mentioned earlier it was cycling 8ppm of ammonia in 12hr. Again when i did a reading about 30 mins ago both the ammonia and nirtite was 0ppm so there doing fine, also the new fish are also doing good. I'm going to keep testing the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate every night after work to keep an eye on things but i think everything's going good.

Thanks for the help everyone.