New plants to already cycled tank

[Bethany92]

How fragile is a cycled tank?

I had a really great ecosystem starting in my 5.5gal tank. I have a betta (Milo) and a blue mystery snail (Blukey) along with lots of little substrate worms that Milo loves to snack on, from what I've read it's the harmless worms that eat fish waste and help out the biological filter. I added three live plants today but made a huge mistake. The big mistake I made with it was having to adjust and move the existing plants around and add more substrate to plant the new ones. It got incredibly cloudy as I put in the rest of the Fluval substrate I had on hand. I didn't rinse it long enough and apparently forgot the nightmare it created when I first set up this tank a couple months ago because I repeated said nightmare again today. I capped the substrate with smooth river stones and then I did two cycles of vacuuming off the river stones and adding fresh water to the tank, it was about 50% change the first time and then 75% the last time. Milo and Blukey were in a 2.5gal tank with old tank water and a sponge filter while I did all of this, took me about 4 hours as I tried to wait as long as possible to let as much sediment to settle as possible. I didn't want to keep them in the small tank overnight since I don't trust the small heater I have for it to not cook them, so which is why I did the water changes. I add Seachem Prime and Seachem StressGuard to tap water every water change. After the two cycles of sucking up the settled sediment and adding clean water, it was obviously a full water change. However, I did not rinse off anything that was in the tank prior to this - so all the river rock and decorations along with the substrate that had been in there since the first set up and tank cycle were placed back into the tank. I did have to rinse the sponge filter off as it had a ton of sediment on it.

Will I have to cycle my tank again?

[Patrick_G]

I don't think your tank will cycle again, it should have enough beneficial bacteria left to process the waster from one Betta and a snail. 

[lefty o]

i agree, should be fine. if anything new plants will add to the good in the tank. always better to do small water changes, and give it a day or two in between, but i think you're fine.