What Foid Is Best And Quickest To Break Down When Cycleing My Tank.

[guppyguy1234]

i have a small aquarium that i need cycled i put fish flakes in it yesteray night and tested the water tonight and there was no amonia present and the foid was at the bottom of the tank is there anything i could do or use to speed up the process because it is a breeding tank and the quicker it is done the quicker i can deliver the fish to my lfs

 

[BerryAttack]

make sure that the water is treated.
take filter media out of your already cycled tank and place it into the filter you are using for that tank and boom it'll cycle for you.

 

[guppyguy1234]

i understand how that will transfer the bacteria but what i really want is for amonia to be in the tank so that i no it is being taken out by bacteria as it is breeding i want the fish to be of top quality i may take a plant from my established tank to help.

 

[KittyKat]

Assuming the filter in this tank takes less than 1/3 of the media from your cycled tank, you can replace all of the new media with cycled media and add fish immediately.
 
The best source of ammonia is liquid household ammonia.

 

[fluttermoth]

I see what you're trying to do now, OP.
 
You'll need to wait at least two or three days before the food will rot down enough to produce any ammonia. Once you do get an ammonia reading (it will only be small amount, probably), put your mature media in the filter and test for ammonia twelve hours later. If the ammonia is all cleared, your safe to add fish that day, after you've done a water change to get rid of any left over food. I add the media last thing at night and test next morning when I get up.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

 
Using shrimp or fish food: One of the more popular fishless cycling methods is to buy a few dead shrimp at the grocery store, cut them up into chunks and add them to the aquarium. The shrimp decay, which produces ammonia to feed the nitrifying bacteria. There are a few drawbacks with this method, one being that the hobbyist really has no way to know how much ammonia is being produced by the decaying shrimp, and the aquarium does not look very good with dead shrimp laying on the bottom. Also, the organic material of the shrimp can cause bacteria blooms which turn the aquarium water cloudy. This method works but it takes time and patience and you will probably see a spike in ammonia and nitrite if you add a medium to heavy load of fish after the initial cycling. Note that some people use flake fish food instead of shrimp but this is not recommended because flake food does not have much organic material compared to shrimp and so does not add a lot of ammonia to the water, but you can use cut fish instead of shrimp.

from http/www.drtimsaquatics.com/resources/how-to-start