Is It Okay To Switch Fish During Cycling?

[aquaticman1]

i was wondering if i could switch my 5zebra danios with 5tiger barb ( i have a community tank id like to make my new home for the zebras). would this affect the cycling in any way?

 

[waterdrop]

Different species give off different levels of waste, so the characteristics of how quickly you need to perform water changes is there, but effectively it would make little difference since during a fish-in cycle you have to be testing about twice a day and continually modifying your hunch about what percentage and frequency of water changes will keep you from going above 0.25ppm ammonia(NH3) or 0.25ppm nitrite(NO2) before you can get back home and perform another water change.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[backtotropical]

I don't understand why, having already subjected the danios to ammonia, you would now want to do the same to some tiger barbs?

Surely its better to finish the cycle with the fish which have already been subjected to ammonia poisoning and hope they pull through? Once the tank is cycled, there would be no harm in switching.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, I was wondering the same thing... if you have another tank, why are you fish-in cycling?

But I just decided that perhaps the OP had some reason and let it go.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[K-Holed]

Conversly you could argue that by using two sets of fish, you're only exposing each lot to half the amount of ammonia poisoning and therefore giving them both a fighting chance. I guess it's six of one and half a dozen of the other. Do you chop both a guys arms off or chop one from each and leave them with an arm a piece ... swings and round-abouts.

 

[aquaticman1]

Yes, I was wondering the same thing... if you have another tank, why are you fish-in cycling?

But I just decided that perhaps the OP had some reason and let it go.

~~waterdrop~~

actually the tank in my living room is more of an aggressive tank that was filled with chcilds that my brother just gave away to a friend a few days ago, its now mine to be a community tank. so i was going to add the danos in there, but i decided to hold off another 2 weeks or so for the cycle to finish