best options to quickly introduce/add beneficial bacteria to tank?

[moogie21]

thanks so much for all suggestions and responses! these are very helpful for newbs like myself.

for some reason i 'thought' i did cycle the tank 2 months ago when i add the water w/o any fish, added the api quick start, had air stones, aquaclear 50 running, water became cloudy, and cleared in 10 days. added the initial 2 goldfishes. then after 2 weeks, i added another 2 goldfishes, cleaned/rinsed the filter/media. but i think i rinsed with tap water and may have inadvertently killed the BB (now i know better). after checking the water chemistry, it appears my ammonia is around 0.5ppm, nitrite 5.0 or so, and nitrate around 10. i suspect i have to re-cycle this tank again

 

[Essjay]

I'm new to this site, and don't see a "Sticky" for fish-in cycling,

There are actually 2 stickies for fish-in cycling.

Rescuing A Fish In Cycle Gone Wild - Part I

RESCUING A FISH IN CYCLE GONE WILD Part I If you are reading this it means you have tried to cycle your tank using fish and have run into problems and don’t know what to do. Before we begin to discuss the potential solutions, we would like to make it clear that we do not recommend to...

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The second does get a bit complicated

Rescuing A Fish In Cycle Gone Wild - Part Il

Part II SO YOU STILL WANT TO KEEP CYCLING WITH FISH? If you are determined to ignore the above advice in Part I and still think you want to proceed with a fish in cycle, then you need to be aware of the information presented below. SOME IMPORTANT FACTS ABOUT AMMONIA Ammonia in water exists...

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The simple version is:
Test the water every day and do a water change if either or both ammonia and nitrite are above zero.
Feed the fish once every two or three days and do a water change 4 hours after feeding
Use a good quality bacterial starter.
Put lots of live plants in the tank. Even a number of anacharis (elodea) stems left to float will help, even if they don't look pretty.

 

[mcordelia]

Did you add a source of ammonia when you added the quick start? Usually a fishless cycle takes longer than 10 days, even with bacterial starter. Numbers that I have seen suggest that a fishless cycle with no bacteria source takes 4-6 weeks on average, and with bacteria it is about two weeks.

Were you measuring your ammonia after the first two goldfish were added? What did your numbers look like?