# Stock all at once or Little at a time?



## chicago_animal (Oct 29, 2006)

Tomorrow is a Cichlid Fish Swap where you see alot of good deal of 6 fish for $25 or so. Also, this month my LFS is having a 40% off all fish every weekend.

My question is which is the best way to go with this? If I go to the Swap(40 min away) I will get all these fish right away. If I go to the LFS(10 min away) I can get a few every weekend with this sale.

Which is the best way to approach this?


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## sumthinfishy (Jan 26, 2013)

depends what types of fish we are talking about, but generally its best to add all at once. the reason being is that they can establish a hierarchy or territories all being new to tank. if u add at seperate times, then u have to take other steps to ease aggression, due to the fact that the fish that are already in there consider the newbies to be outsiders and will be aggressive towards them


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## scooter31707 (Aug 24, 2012)

I agree, some cases it can work if you do little at a time depending on fish personality it has work in some cases if the newcomers are smaller than the established fish.


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## MeCasa (Apr 5, 2014)

This is a tough one, stocking all at once is great if it works, however if something goes wrong with sickness or water quality it can quickly be a fiasco.

However I've decided I'm going to stock my tank in one day. One reason is I live near a large city (hour and half away) and I can hit a lot of stores in one day and I hate going to the city (ain't going twice). The other reason is kind of weird. Every tank has it's cherry hiding places and I think it only fair that every fish has a fair chance at the best spots.

So I'll stock my tank in one day with either 1 1/4" or 2" juveniles depending what's available and how much they cost. But, if I buy one 2", they will all be 2" and the same if I go with 1 1/4"

Big tank, 150 gallons but eight species of cichlids may turn into survival of the fittest....so it's gotta be fair


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## hose91 (Mar 5, 2014)

Good luck! I stocked my 75G with 32 juvenile 1.25" Mbuna and 5 syno lucipinnis from an online vendor. The fishless cycle worked wonders, but I'll admit to a couple of tense hours at the beginning since I had no idea if the tank was truly habitable. If there was something nasty and undetected going on, I'd have been out of luck. Still, it was nice to get them all in at once, and after three weeks, they're still sorting themselves out a bit.


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## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

I like to stock all at once if your bacteria are well established for the bioload you will be adding. But I don't like to stock at all if the tank is not cycled.


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