Hi welcome to the forum! I have the same tank as you
But now I want to go bigger haha, I knew it would happen eventually
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With the cycle, the nutrfin stuff is useless as is all shop bought products that claim to have bacteria in them. Its just not the case, the bacteria that supports the tank needs flowing water and high levels of oxygen along with a source of ammonia and nitrite to survive. If the bacteria does not have these factors then the colony dies off at about 10% per 24 hours (as it would in a filter). One way this could be prevented would be if the bacteria was controlled from source to the shop and again from the shop to your tank ie how its kept in the shop so this means it would have to be chilled to keep the bacteria alive but dormant but since most of the products like this are just on the shelf in all kinds of temperatures all year round and often stood there for months at a time there is just no way they are of any use in getting your filter started.
Now in a very cynical look at the fish keeping trade I would say that the reason they sell these magic potions is to give a placebo effect to new fishkeepers that they have cycled a tank ready for fish safe to go in and then the fish are added and then the actual cycle that happens in all water starts and the fish die, then that process continues for the next 2 months (the actual length of a cycle) until the tank stables out at last all the original fish are dead and they have sold you 3 or 4 lots of fish of which some will survive the cycle but then some of them will be sick or have a parasite as a result of the levels of toxic chemicals that occur during the cycling process and again they make money from you buying medicine etc.
So the way around this and what I really really urge you to do is to follow one of the cycling guides on this forum quite easy either way, one more time consuming but you get fish sooner the other very easy but you add fish a few weeks down the line.
So first way, fish in cycle. This is similar to what I was saying about the fish trade being cynical, but in a controlled manor. When any form of rotting organic material is present in water (dead plants, fish poo etc but mainly fish poo) a chemical called ammonia is produced which is very very toxic to fish and will easily kill most fish right out. From the ammonia source bacteria forms in the water on the river/lake bed and in rocks and on plants all over will by tiny bacteria and it feeds on the ammonia and turn it into nitrite in a similar way to how we turn oxygen to carbon dioxide when we breathe. Nitrite is still poisonous to fish but a little less so than ammonia however an additional type of bacteria grows to convert the nitrite into nitrate which is quite a harmless chemical in low doses and we remove this as fish keepers. So that said when you add fish to a tank and they start pooing there is no bacteria to deal with these chemicals so they build up and kill the fish but we can combat this by doing daily water changes around the 50% mark to keep the levels low enough to be safe for the fish but still feed the filter it will be a lengthy process over a number of weeks then eventually the bacteria colony will have grown sufficiently to deal with the ammonia and nitrite and the water changes will just go down to your regular routine of either weekly or two weekly which ever your most comfortable with but you get fish quicker than the next way.
The other way is called a fishless cycle, which uses pure house hold ammonia to bypass the fish poo in the cycle stage. Each day you add a small dose of ammonia just a few milliliters per day and then measure the results with your API water test kit and the process I talked about above will happen as well but it means that you can let the ammonia and nitrite levels rise up and drop without worrying about the fish dieing and is generally less stressful, much less water changes and zero risk of death or disease. This process takes about 4-5 weeks to do though which is the only downside to it really.
So that said its down to you on which way you want to do it. These are both processes that you will not be told in the shops because quite simply if someone told you that you need to change 120 liters per day in your tank for 5 weeks if you add fish now or wait 5 weeks while adding a few ml of ammonia to the tank and if you dont do either you will loose fish after fish for these 5 weeks then you would just walk away and think its just mad. So for simplicity and ease of sale they say to do the thing for 5 days and then people start getting their fish and they make the sale.
Take a while to read this through and have a read through the fishless cycle and fish in cycle guides in the beginners resource section and see which you decide to do.
Im not trying to put you off the hobby because it really is a fantastic hobby once you start to really learn about it and when you find all the fish you want. Its just a regular problem that the early stages of a tank are often the most important part and its when people have the least knowledge that its the problem.
Any ideas of the fish you want to have?
Hope its helped Wills
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