Cycling With Fish Food

[jsmathieson]

I recently lost all my fish except one amano shrimp (who is still going strong!) in a power outage. I redid my whole tank and I lost all my filter media in the outage so I am starting a new filter and I was wondering how long it takes to cycle just using fish food and how much I should use? Should I just go buy some ammonia? would it be faster? Also is it ok to use Prime during the cycle process? The first time I cycled my tank I did it the wrong way so I want to do it right this time.

Thanks for any help...

 

[Picoreefer4966]

It's possible some of your beneficial bacteria survived in your substrate...providing you didn't rinse the substrate in fresh chlorinated water. If not...then you may be cycled pretty quickly. Have you tested your water parameters at all since it's been running again? What are the stats?
If you did clean everything really well (wiping out your nitrifying bacteria) it could take up to 6 weeks to properly cycle your tank. There are several method of cycling. You can use non detergent amonia, fish food, or dark brown sugar. (I know that last one sounds odd but it works) the idea is to feed the bacteria so it multiplies turning amonia to nitrites then nitrites to nitrates. You're tank will be cycled once your readings are 0 amonia, 0 nitrite, and you get nitrate readings. Once your nitrate levels are down (by doing water changes) you can start slowly adding fish. There aren't any absolute time periods for a tank to cycle. HTH