tank starting over

Question
Chris,
    Following up on my problem on or around 6/30 re: my water being all messed up. The one fish i had left died. the guy at my lfs had me to put 2 cups of bleach in my aquarium and urn it normally for 24 hrs. then take all the water out and refill it with warm water for 10 minutes ,redrain it and fill it back up. apparently i had something in my water i could not get rid of. i have a 55 gal cichlid tank on the 10th i put my first 4 cichlids in this week i will put 4 more in.  since i am recycling my tank the lfs gave me a bacteria additive now my water is crystal clear fish are not stressed at all eating well (feeding every 3 days). my ph is 8.0 nitrite is 20  nitrate is 5.0 total hardness gh is 300  alkalinity is 300 and ammonia is 0.  this a stupid question but will my tank go through the cloudiness or will my adding the bacteria help prevent that.

                thanks for your help,
                    vicki

Answer
Hi Vicki;

No question is stupid. It is stupid NOT to ask questions when you don't know something. So don't worry about asking me stuff. It's what I volunteer for. Sometimes, what people think is a 'stupid question' actually leads to even more important infrmation. Which as you will read below, has happened here. ;-)

Each tank experiences the break-in differently, so no one knows which ones will get cloudy and which won't. One thing for sure is that you should not add any more fish until the nitrite and ammonia are a "zero" and stay there. More fish will make them both higher and you could lose them all. Wait until the cycling process is complete and then you can add new fish again. Even with additives that boost the bacteria balance it takes time to really get it established.

Followups welcome

At Your Service;
Chris Robbins

Come on over and join us on the freshwater fish forum at About.com to get even more information too;
http://freshaquarium.about.com/od/questionsanswers/a/naavigateforum.htm

My member name is ChrisR62. See You There!