Yes, we've had the "qualifying week" thing going for a year or two here in the forum. Basically, the "ending point" of a fishless cycle has always had a bit of controversy to it in that some people think you should wait for double-zeros to happen at 8 or even 6 hours after ammonia has been added, rather than the longer 12 hours and still others (usually beginners with little experience in fishless cycles) think you can just end it when double-zeros are coming at 18 or 20 hours.
What Miss Wiggle and BTT and I found was that if we had a little "system" where we wait until the fishless cycler gets the very first time of double-zeros in 12 hours (ie. you do your normal ammonia dose up to 5ppm (must be 5ppm) and both ammonia and nitrite(NO2) have dropped to true zero ppm within 12 hours or less) and when they get that it signifies that they can start their "qualifying week." The qualifying week was just meant as a way to "finish out the week" (hopefully the better part of a week at least) until the weekend of the "big water change and getting of fish." Anyway, the point is to "qualify" the biofilter by watching it repeat the double-zeros all week. We found right away that this was a great test. It forks the fishless cycles in two directions: if the biofilter is not really ready it will mess up. If the biofilter is ready it will be rock solid at its task all week.
Its also during the qualifying week that you usually scope out the LFS(s) and finalize your plans for the first stocking after the Big Water Change.
OK, TIME, well, there's the problem. Fishless cycles are wildly unpredictable and when you put MM in, they get even more unpredictable but usually quicker. Standard fishless cycles range between 3 weeks and 3 months. Good MM fishless cycles can take as little as a week or two, but they are truly unpredictable about that.
Putting in plants, John, will not disturb your fishless cycle necessarily except to possibly make things more confusing if its a large mass of plants and it eats most of the ammonia and NO3, which they can sometimes do if they start growing successfully. For expensive plants people sometimes worry that the fishless cycle might get too much algae on them or that the high ammonia might damage the plants. In the case of an MM cycle that's "taking" I'd not think those things would be a problem because the time involved would hopefully be too short.
~~waterdrop~~
