In my opinion... yes. Go and do the partial water changes - every other day. It's not gonna help cycle your tank faster, but will help the fish out.

As long as you don't do any cleaning of the gravel or filter it won't slow your cycle much and will definatly help the fish make it thru the first few weeks.

Lisa

To add an ammonia test kit will help you out and maintain a "reasonable level" (try to keep it 1.0ppm and under) of ammonia. You need the ammonia , as it seems you know allready, to establish the cycle. I would reccomend a complete test set. I personally like the "aquarium pharmaceuticals freshwater master test kit" IMO it is the easiest to differentiate the color bars and is reasonably priced as well as accurate. This kit will last you 1-3 years deppending on how many aquariums you cycle, so right there it is cheaper then a bottle of test strips that can be inaccurate at times. If you know anyone with a healthy, established aquarium borrow some filter media, a handful of gravel some rocks or other decor to seed you filter. This will speed things up. Avoid products like "cycle" or similar crap. The only store bought bacteria that is proven to work is "Bio-Spira" by Marineland, very expensive, refridgerated, laboratory cultured bacteria. Other things to help reduce ammonia, add zeo-lite to your filter media, double dose your water conditioner (if it is one like amquel or prime), add a java fern or 2, even if you don't plan on live plants, it'll do ya better then cycle or TLC and other useless items. Reduce feeding to once every other day or every 3 days. The fish will not starve and less food = less decaying food and fish poop = less ammonia production. The cloudy water is probably a bacterial bloom and not uncommon in the first stage of the cycle, esp. w/ the big fish load.

Thanks, everyone. I'll give it a try!

-pf