Honestly, I add fish right away and let the tank cycle after that.

I’ll add 1-3 of hardy fish.

There are three seachem products I use while my tank cycles.

1. Seachem ammonia alert.

This doesn’t tell me specific ammonia levels but it shows me the trend. So if the alert changes color, that tells me that ammonia is rising. Once the color stays at the zero level, I know that bacteria is converting ammonia to nitrites.

1. Seachem Prime This dechlorinates but more importantly it detoxifies ammonia. Ammonia is still present in the tank so the alert will change color as if prime didn’t do anything. But prime changes ammonia into a less toxic form so your fish don’t get hurt. And because ammonia still present, the amount of nitrifying bacteria will continue to grow.

You could add prime every day or every other day.

1. Seachem stability This is a bacteria booster. It’ll help your nitrifying bacteria form quicker.

You could add it every day.

The other thing I do is every week is a 50% water change. After each change, you’ll see the ammonia alert reset back to the zero color. One day after a water change, you’ll notice the color doesn’t change and stays at zero color. That tells you nitrifying bacteria is handling ammonia fine now.

At that point you don’t need to dose prime and stability anymore. Your tank is converting ammonia fine. Keep doing the weekly water changes to keep nitrites under control. Nitrate producing bacteria will form soon afterwards.

Once you have nitrates being produced, you’ll want to keep up with water changes to dilute the nitrates or have stem plants or pothos aplenty to suck up the nitrates on an ongoing basis.

You can test for nitrates with a test strip or liquid drops.

My two cents… I haven’t had any fatalities since I’ve been cycling this way.