Welcome to the forum H_N_L_FISH.
I anm sorry that we have such confusing terms and never think to explain what we mean by them. A tank's filter starts out as just so much hardware with very little to benefit any fish. Fish, as a part of living in the water produce ammonia from their gills directly and from the food and their wastes decaying in the tank. Ammonia is poisonous to fish in amounts above 0.25 ppm so we try to control those levels quite low. Fortunately we get lucky and there are bacteria that will remove ammonia from the water, they thrive on doing it. Unfortunately those ammonia processing bacteria produce nitrites which are also poisonous in trace amounts. Talk about luck, there are bacteria that love to get their hands on nitrites and convert it to nitrates. Nitrates are almost harmless in concentrations of 20 ppm so there is plenty of time for us to deal with those with almost no trouble.
OK, so where does the filter come into all this? The filter contains things that have a surface area, like your ceramic noodles, where the bacteria can grow and thrive. When we talk about a cycle, we are talking about setting up the bacteria in enough numbers that they can process all of the ammonia and nitrites in your water so that you can never measure any more than a zero of either chemical. The bacteria grow wherever they find any ammonia present along with oxygen, and a surface to grow on. In our filters, we provide the flow of nicely oxygenated water across a nice large surface area of things like sponges and ceramic bits. The bacteria that we want can double their numbers about once every 24 hours if there is enough of all the things present that they need.
A couple of points people have been trying to make go like this, until there is a source of ammonia in the water, there is nothing for the ammonia processors to use to increase their numbers. If you do not provide any ammonia source, the few bacteria that may be present will slowly lose their population so until you placed fish into the tank, nothing was happening to help the bacterial populations grow. With fish in the tank there is a source of ammonia that any bacteria that happen to be present will start to use. We call this situation a fish-in cycle because you have not fully established the needed bacteria in advance of adding the fish. From what you have posted in this somewhat confusing thread, that is where I see your tank right now.
What does this mean? It means that you will be doing daily tests of ammonia and then nitrites and doing large enough water changes to keep both chemicals at less than 0.25 ppm at all times for the next few weeks until the bacteria can become established in your tank. By then you will feel like an old pro with your testing equipment and will become all too familiar with the gravel vac and buckets. There is a link to a thread about the fish-in cycle, called fish-in cycling of all things, in my signature area that can fill you in on some of the details. Please give it a read through and come back with any questions that you may have.
