One At A Time With Fishless?

[Piti]

Okay, my question is reguarding a fishless cycle.

I personally enjoy the putting of one group of fish in at a time (or individual fish) to my tanks over a couple of weeks, however my question is if I complete a fishless cycle should I fully stock the tank from the start, or is putting my lone fish into the tank an okay option. (I am assuming putting the solo fish in will over time reduce the ammount of +bacteria, but what im not sure is if the next fish that goes in will have to struggle to then produce the + bacteria (as if there was no cycle at all))

Or would just doing a media donation from one tank to another just save me the strugle of pouring nh3..

I plan on getting a 40g tank around november-december.

I hope this is all coherant.

 

[fluttermoth]

If you wanted to fully stock after a fishless cycle it's certainly possible.

If you want to stock bit by bit, that's fine too; the bacteria may take a day or two to 'catch up' but as long as you don't add too many at once and keep an eye on the water quality it's not a problem.

You can completely skip the whole cycling process by using mature media from another tank or filter; just bear in mind what kind of bio load it's been used to. So, if you take half the media from a filter that's been in a tank with 20 neon tetras, that media will support 10 neons with no problems.

Hope I've explained that clearly enough...

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

Some say that in theory you can add your entire planned stock to a fishlessly cycled tank in one go, but I would not recommend it.

Why? because one or more fish in the group you buy may have an infectious disease that could wipe out a lot of your tank in the blink of an eye.

It is far safer to add a group of hardy and paeaceful fish to begin with, depending on the tank size, then buy new groups (gradually getting more sensitive and more territorial) every couple of weeks if all is well... Ideally quarantining the new group of fish in a seperate tank for at least two weeks, to monitor for any illness and then treat it (so every fish that gets added to the main tank has been reasonably assessed as being illness free).

 

[OldMan47]

If you have indeed done a successful fishless cycle, you can theoretically add all of your fish at one time. I am never quite that optimistic so I will add maybe half of the final stocking levels and monitor the tank for a while before adding any more.