Preventing A Mini-cycle

[Birdie]

When adding a few new fish to an established tank, the bio-load is increased, yes?

In order to prevent or at least reduce a mini-cycle, is it best to not feed the tank's inhabitants for a day or a few days ( working on the theory that less food both eaten and uneaten means less poo and less ammonia). Or is the lack of food combined with a new environment likely to be so stressful as to outweigh the benefits of a ( more gradual) increase in the bio-load?

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Basically the tank shouldn't go through a mini-cycle as long as you don't add too many fish at once (particularly if they are high waste producing fish). Not feeding them won't really change things a great deal and is generally unesarsary to put them through as long as you take care with what type of fish and how many you are putting into the tank .
How many gallon is your tank, how long has it been set up (did you fishless cycle it or cycle it with fish), what is its current stocking, how large are your fish, is your filtration adequate for the tank, have you experienced any water quality issues recently, what types of and size fish are you getting for it etc etc are the main sorts of factors you need to take into consideration when stocking it with new fish .

 

[andywg]

So long as the bioload does not go up a great deal (say 10% more fish by body length on most thin fish) then the bacterial colony will soon get up to pace.

If you had a hyper sensitive probe you would detect a small cycle as the colony came up to speed, but to be honest the size of the colony is in contsant flux. so you would see that at feeding time as more food is added, so nothing to worry about.