Cycle + quarantine

[Karen B.]

I had to leave for 2 weeks & a friend of mine came regularly to check on the fish. One of the feeder malfunctionned and emptied a lot of food in the tank - It looks like it snowed in the tank! 🤪

I was using the 10 gallons tank to quarantine 5 chili Rasboras and their time was done so my friend just moved the fish away.

I am back home. To my biggest surprise, the parameters are fine, no ammonia. I still removed all the decor and plants and syphonned (way too much) about 95% of the water. Yet there is still debris but I am ok with it - will help fertilize the plants/bacteria.
I also serviced the HOB filter and the air sponge filter (so I did everything people say not to) in the aquarium water.

I filled it back, put the plants and decor back. My problem is that I learned I am getting my 12 new chili Rasboras in a few hours. As its my quarantine tank, they are meant to go there. But I am afraid I may have messed up my cycle or that it won’t be able to keep up once I add the trio meds/fish.

I treat my water with prime and stability. I will be using the aquarium coop trio med. I also have a bottle of fritz 7.

I plan on adding the fish, the med trio and test everyday. Should I use the fritz 7 right away no matter what or just wait and see what happens?

Any other advice or ideas to make sure I don’t kill my fish in quarantine because of my dodgy cycle?

[Aaron S]

Good chance you're good to go. 

If you're concerned, grab some filter media or swap it into your quarantine tank. 

 

In other words, import the cycle from show tanks into the quarantine tank, and you'll be solid. 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

@Karen B.Agree with @Aaron S, you could use the Fritz 7 as a supplement never a bad thing when adding fish but nothing beats cycled media. The overfeeding just got you a bloom of your biome, pretty much proved you've cycled as it seems that there was sufficient beneficial bacteria to absorb it. Of course you'll need to watch things like a hawk - if you have a test kit or strips check daily or if you see funny behavior from the fish test. 

[Patrick_G]

My gut feeling is that you should be fine.  Even if you killed some of the bacteria you should still have enough to process the waste from 12 chili Rasboras since they’re tiny and have such a small bio load.