Being that you have a 75 g tanks, if you start out stocking very slowly, theres a good chance you can have a virtually silent cycle depending on the size of the fish you are adding.
if I wanted to cycle WITH fish should I go ahead and stock the tank pretty good at first to get the cycle started
My recomendation is to start out slowly, there again, I have no clue what fish you are going to stock, so I can't recomend how many of what to put in to start with. Adding a large amount of fish at one time will ultimately be a disaster. It only takes one fish to produce ammonia and get the cycle started. Bacteria will not grow any faster with lots of ammonia or nitrites than it will with just a little. What you want to do is add a small bioload, as your ammonia and nitrites get to zero, add another fish. You will have a short spike in your parameters (mini cycle), but it won't be near as long as it took the initial cycle to complete. For healthy, happy fish during a fishy cycle..stock slowly.
I hear that if you just add a few fish and cycle, then when u add more you could get a mini-cycle and I am trying to figure out the point to that
If you add new fish to a fully cycled tank, regardless of how long the tank has been set up, you are going to experience a mini cycle. Depending on how many and what size fish you add to a cycled tank will determine how long the mini cycle lasts and what extreme you water parameters will go and how fast the parameters will rise (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate). Most often this mini cycle is so fast, we do not notice it.
Buy, if you havent done so already, a liquid test kit for testing your water. I recomend the aquarium pharmaceuticals master test kit. Its really simple to use and not at all expensive.
Blue
